Can You Fly?
by Mystic25
Summary: Sam thought he could fly once. Shortest summary in the history of the world, but that's all I got. Set in Season 10.
1. Chapter 1

"Can You Fly?"

Summary: Sam thought he could fly once. Shortest summary in the history of the world, but that's all I got. Set in Season 10.

Rating: M for imagery and violence

A/N: This was inspired by the bit of Sam and Dean jumping off the shed together as Superman and Batman.

A/N #2: Sorry for the lame five word summary, I don't know how to summarize this story without giving parts away.

* * *

><p><strong>xxxxxXxxxx<strong>

"_You know what movie would have gone viral? if we still had it, _

_when you were five and you jumped off the shed because you thought you could fly."_

"_After you jumped first."_

~Dean and Sam Winchester

"Supernatural" Episode: "#Thinman"

**xxxxXxxxx**

* * *

><p><strong><em>1987<em>**

"_Dean wait!" Sam scrambled up after his brother on fast legs onto the discarded wooden apple crate that someone had long ago left there; it was half rotted and creaked under his canvas sneakers. The bottom of his black Batman cape snagged on the splintered wood, and jerked Sam down by the collar, choking him for an instant. Sam coughed and pulled the material away, trying to find nonexistent purchase in the slick corrugated metal side of the storage shed. "Dean!"_

_In the brilliant blue summer sky above him Sam's 9, nearly 10-year-old brother turned down to stare at him, a red and yellow "S" logo emblazoned upon a gray t-shirt over a thread torn pair of second hand Levi's. Dean smirked in that mischievous way of his and turned and reached down to grab Sam's hand and hauled him up high enough until Sam's hand found purchase on the sharp edged lip of the shed's roof._

_Sam's legs dangled two feet in the air and he kicked and pushed with upper body strength he didn't have, hands slick with sweats that came from both the lack of breeze in the Florida summer heat and the fear of falling flat on his butt. Sam scrabbled for Dean's hand again, as Dean yanked him up by the gray blue costume of his shirt like a puppy with his scruff, until Sam's small arms reached up and over and he was lying flat on the roof, breathing hard, face pressed into the metal._

"_C'mon Sammy, get up." Dean nudged Sam with one dirty white sneaker, and hauled Sam up carefully but firmly by the arm until he was standing in his shorter height beside his brother._

_It was mid-July, and the air was sweltering, Dean's whole body was damp and slick with sweat like he'd taken a shower with his clothes on. The shed was 10 feet high and overlooked the patchy back lawns of the little town in Southern Florida they were staying in, more dead grass and gray sand than actual lawns, waving in the hottest heat of the afternoon sun._

_When their dad had first told them about the Hunt for a Skin Walker down in Florida Dean had went wild with excitement, not about the hunt, but about the prospects of the beach and the ocean. His excitement had transferred over to Sam, who talked of nothing but building sand forts and castles for days as they drove down from Tennessee to Florida. But when the Impala finally pulled upon its resting spot in the Sunshine State at 8:00 at night it was to a land absent of beaches or ocean. Instead filled with miles of tall pine trees thick weeds, breaking only to wooden houses with scraggly lawns and old dogs sleeping outside in flat patches of brown dirt. They weren't staying in hotel this time, but in a house, a concrete cinder block one bedroom with a carport and a fence shared by their neighbor, an old man who liked to smoke menthols and drink blackberry whiskey until midnight. The inflatable raft and beach toys Dean had managed to buy with his hard earned 20 dollars from hustling Go Fish at School sat in a deflated pile against the fence eyed daily by their neighbor's black lab that stared at them through their shared fence portion, tongue and teeth always lolling within snapping distance of them. _

_After he had seen their sad excuse for Florida, Dean had tried to keep his disappointment down to a dull roar for Sam's sake because he had hyped up the kid during the entire ride down about the beaches that were so white they looked like snow and the waves of the warm blue water that were perfect for swimming. Sam had even worn a pair of swim trunks and plastic diver's goggles strapped to his head from Atlanta to Eustace, Florida in anticipation of the beach. And the sight of the five-year-old, plastic bucket in his hand, looking around and around for all that promised water in the brown yard that had died a crispy death in the heat made Dean feel like the biggest liar there ever was._

_So after their dad had packed up the Impala, given Dean the usual warnings to salt the doors and windows and watch after his little brother and had left with the promise he'd be back in three days' time, Dean had taken it upon himself to cheer Sam up and got his brother up from pretending to be asleep to walk to the store with him._

_Eustace was the kind of sleepy town that belonged on the front of a post card, with a main street inhabited by huge pickup trucks sitting under tall sun blocking awnings. Sam complained about the heat the entire time Dean had walked with him down to the local five and dime with half empty shelves of generic foods and cheap looking clothes. Dean had grabbed a loaf of bread and two jars of peanut butter, keeping an eye out for something 'special' for Sam. He had spotted what he was looking for on the racks in the next aisle over next to a Styrofoam display of dusty artificial pink tulips and hanging plastic gardening tools. He perused through the rack of half off Halloween costumes until he came across a Batman outfit complete with real cloth cape and a gray shirt with a Superman logo, no cape, but they were both only three dollars because of some holes at the bottom of the fabric. But no one smart would be looking at the bottom of Batman's cape, so Dean got them both, brushing off the woman with the green beehive hairdo who called Sam "cute" and wanted to offer him some cold lemonade that sat in plastic bottles in the cooler behind the register. He headed home with Sam and his bounty, and once there they divided up the costumes. Sam wanted to be Batman because the Superman outfit didn't even have a cape. So Dean had helped him into the costume, rolling up the black spandex leggings because they were a size two big and painted around Sam's eyes with black magic marker because the plastic Batman mask wouldn't fit him._

_This was how both brothers found themselves on the tin storage shed dressed as Batman and Superman. _

_Sam wiped at his eyes because the magic marker had started to run from his sweat and stared out over their neighbor's yard. "This is really high Dean." Far below the black dog from next door barked at them like he thought Batman and Superman might make a tasty treat. _

"_It's not too high for Superman or Batman, Sammy." Dean returned his voice full of confidence and more than a little devil may care. He looked down at the grass below, imagining it was a high sky scraper and the Labrador was the Evil Robot Dog of Florida. Their dad had told Dean of some crazy things that he'd killed over the years after Sam had gone to bed, but Dean bet even _he_ had never fought an Evil Robot Dog of Florida with Batman at his side. The dog barked again and Dean stared down at it and shouted in his best super hero voice: "You don't scare us you damn Robot Dog!" _

**xxxxXxxxx**

**2014**

The fire escape ladder rattled as Dean ascended it, rising up through the air veiled in the shadowed heat of a summer night. Sam was right behind him, his boots banging up each rung of the ladder until he jumped over the last two and landed heavily on the roof the abandoned building.

"Do you think we lost her?" Sam panted thick breaths into the air that had gone the color of misty twilight.

Sam and Dean stood on a roof top of bricks and cement peering over the curved fire escape ladder at the narrowed alleyway of chain linked fences and steam that rose from the puddles in the humid air over sixty feet below them.

A thud and a clank rattled the bolted down ladder, answering Sam's question. He and Dean pulled back from the ladder, which clung like a vine over the edge of the building. But they only backed up a handful of inches, each held a 6 inch sold solid iron blade encircled in a handle made of cypress wood. The city of Miami was a massive sprawl of sky scrapers and heavy tropical heat, and the pawn shops inside the city were equally massive, selling all kinds of things including gold watches, inflatable girlfriends, and weaponry dating back to 1100 BC that went for only 30 dollars each.

For being over nine centuries old, the knife hilt felt amazingly strong in Dean's grip, and balanced all the way down the blade that ended in a row of serrated points that resembled the teeth of a shark. He had yet to actually use the knife, but that was all about to change.

The clanging noise moved up the ladder at a pace that was too fast to be human, Dean bared the knife, and Sam bared the knife's brother in the same stance.

A flash of brilliant white rose like a fog over the ladder, landing hard against the rooftop. A woman in a flowing Grecian style Chiton glowered at them in the fading light. "Where do you think you're going boys?" Her hair was the color of burnt chocolate and it was pilled in a mass on her head by pins of gold so bright they glowed like stars had been trapped in her hair. Her eyes flashed a copper color and a smile that wasn't human pulled on her face. "We weren't finished yet."


	2. Chapter 2

**xxxxXxxxx**

"_The Big Black Dog bit a big Black Bear made the Big Black Bear Bleed."_

-Tongue Twister

**xxxxXxxx**

* * *

><p><strong><em>1987<em>**

"_Dean, "Sam tugged at the side of Dean's Superman shirt, eyeing the big black dog as it continued to bark loudly at him. "Brownie sounds mad." Sam had heard their neighbor call the dog 'Brownie' when he walked it, along with 'you dumb shit, don't _piss _on my tires!' Sam had been around Dean and dad enough to know what 'piss' and 'shit' meant so he never asked either of them about those words. The dog had never been mean to him, but it was big, and had a big mouth and mean looking teeth, which looked meaner from how high up he and Dean were in the sky._

_Dean stared down at Brownie with a look that said he wasn't afraid, and 'so?' at the same time. "He's nothing but a puppy."_

"_He's too _big _to be a puppy Dean!" Sam argued with all his five-year-old petulance as Brownie barked again like he was tired of waiting for them to fall off the shed and was going to jump up there to eat them as a compromise. "What if he bites me?"_

"_He's not going to bite you Sammy," Dean said in his matter-of-fact voice. "I'm not going to let him, and neither are you."_

"_I'm not?" Sam asked in confusion. He had an itch on his right eye and he dug at it with his thumb of his hand before he remembered the magic marker there and pulled his hand away to a big black smear mark on his fingers._

"_Course not," Dean said like it was something Sam should have already known. "You're _Batman _dude, you're not going to let a dumb ol' dog get the better of you!" Dean took another look over at Brownie who stood over the fence, barking with a plastic hotdog in his mouth. Dean smirked. "Besides I don't think ol' Brownie there's a trained killer." Brownie barked a squeaking plastic hotdog sound. Dean expanded his smirk into laughter and turned to unfurl Sam's black Batman cape behind him so that it went a good three inches behind Sam's dirty sneakers. Dean cast an appraising eye over his little brother's appearance, tugging down once on Sam's Batman Logo shirt. "There." Dean smiled in approval. "Now you're ready for anything!"_

**xxxxxXxxxx**

**2014**

The woman's sandals resonated against the concrete of the roof of the building with a sound far heavier than a pair of leather sandals should have made, it sounded like she was walking with mallets tied to her feet. The concrete cracked apart wherever she stepped and purple blue blooms of Wolfspane and white blooms of Hemlock pushed its way up through the cracks.

She eyed the weapons Sam and Dean brandished at her like they were nothing but inflatable toys. "Didn't your mother ever teach you not to point knives at ladies?"

Dean gave her a sideways brush off head cock. "Substituting 'lady' for 'bitch' doesn't make you the first one."

The woman sneered at him and swept that sneer over to encompass Sam as well. "Arrogant little things aren't you?" Another flash of molten copper color came across her eyes and her sneer turned harder, like Sam and Dean were nothing but flecks of dust stuck to the mud on her sandals. Her eyes roamed over the weapons in their hands again. "Been dumpster diving?"

"Yeah you're gonna wish we had." Dean returned with a voice that was a snarl sharper than any alley dog, and much more deadly.

Dean's threat earned him a pandering look from the woman; she reached down and yanked a clutch of Hemlock blooms from the cracks, twirling the poisonous flowers round and round in her fingers. "You _children_,you over estimate your worth," she inhaled the blooms and smiled like she was licking blood of her teeth. "I was hunter long before your civilization was even conceived. So what makes you think your little broken pieces of iron can hurt me?"

"Maybe the fact that we've hurt things a whole lot scarier and a whole lot more _important_ than you," Sam deadpanned, his knife out in the empty space between him and the woman, waiting for the trigger that would close the gap. "Maybe you're the one who's over estimating their worth."

A clap of thunder shook the air from an approaching storm that stained the corner of the night a two shades darker.

The woman's stared at Sam transfixed, a forming of a smile on her face. "You are a sly dog aren't you baby?-" her words turned to honey as she roamed her eyes up and down him. "But I guess it takes one to know one."

Her body began to bow in on itself, and her spine cracked and contorted her down to all fours, her hands and feet were replaced by massive paws and her white Chitin melted away to solid black fur, matted up at the hackles of an enormous dog with barred teeth and molten copper eyes.

She snarled a noise that rose higher than the distant thunder, trails of saliva that smelled thickly of hemlock and Wolfspane dripping from her mouth and onto the concrete. She skulked slowly over on paws the size of saucers, pointed ears laid completely flat against her head.

Dean stared down the snarling animal. "You know personally, I think this look is an improvement. It really brings out more of your personality."

The dog's lips pulled up in a snarl that showed two razor sharp looking long canines. Her mouth opened wide and she leapt at Dean, knocking him hard to the ground, spinning his knife out of his grasp, lines of rancid drool leaked onto his face.

"Dean!" Sam's cry echoed up into the storm clouds as a flash of lightning enveloped them all. He grabbed the giant dog by its thick wire haired scruff, a fowl heat wafted off its skin like biohazard garbage, He drew his knife in a sideways angle, taking aim at the flesh in between her ribs. But she turned at the last moment and snatched his right arm into her razor sharp teeth.


	3. Chapter 3

**xxxxXxxxx**

"_Hey I was nine, and I was dressed up like Superman, everybody knows that Batman can't fly."_

-Dean Winchester

"Supernatural" Episode: "#Thinman"

**xxxxXxxxx**

* * *

><p><strong>1987<strong>

_Dean glanced down to the grass at the small blue wading pool he had laid down on the grass. It was half full of water from the old dirty hose he had found in the shed they were standing on. The green hose still hung half inside of it, dribbling water through it kinked length._

"_Are we going swimming?" Sam peered over to where Dean was looking at, the height was making him dizzy, so he took a swayed step back, hand grasped tightly onto Dean's right elbow. _

_Dean shook his head. "That's our landing pad Sammy," he said what he said in the way of big brothers that knew the secrets of staying up late, and how to get two HoHos for the price of one at the grocery store._

"_It is?" Sam peered once again at the plastic pool half filled with hose water. His Batman cape sagged at the knot at his neck. He tugged it up, and set it up high around his shoulders. "I thought it was a pool." The pool was one of the plastic kind painted with colorful fish around it that he'd seen kids in nicer neighborhoods play in on hot days, splashing with plastic toys and the promise of hotdogs when they were tired of the water. _

"_Trust me on this Sammy," Dean said, laying his hands on Sam's shoulders and fixing his Batman cape more than Sam had fixed it so that the bottom of it was no longer caught up on the bottom of Sam's sneakers. _

_Once Dean was satisfied that Sam once again looked superhero ready he stared out over the sun filled horizon as if he really _was _Superman about to do battle with a nasty arch nemesis. A hot wind picked up and blew the hem of Sam's Batman cape as Batman himself dug at his eye again, creating even more of a black smudge on his hands._

"_Quit it Sammy," Dean warned in his least threatening voice because Sam was still a little squirt. "You're going to ruin your mask dude."_

_The prospect of being Batman without his mask sobered Sam into stopping and he asked his next important question. "Dean, what's a landin pad?"_

"_Not _landin pad _Sammy," Dean corrected. "_Landing pad._ It's what helicopters fly down on when the people want to get off."_

_Sam stared at him, confusion in his black marker lined eyes. "I thought I was Batman."_

_Dean shook his head for just a moment in big brother exasperation. "Just watch me Sam, okay?" _

_Before Sam could fire off a: _'watch what?'_ Dean bent into a crouched position then launched himself off of the tin roof. He sailed into the summer air before he dropped into the pool with a wet splash that sent half the water to the grass and half of it to soak up all over Dean's shirt and jeans. _

"_That was _awesome!" _Dean stood back up, water squishing in his sneakers and sliding down his ears, He climbed out of the pool and ran over to where he had set a massive Sony video camera on top of an aluminum trash can. He stared through the camcorder's black rubber eyepiece, sliding the camera around on the trashcan for a better angle lid like he'd seen professionals do on TV. "This will be so _cool _to watch later!" Dean had been given the camera from the school library to use in project about mapping cloud formations for science. But he thought it was a pretty stupid waste of a really cool camera, and it would be better used taping just how awesome he and Sammy were. He stared up at Sam with a grin like he's just gotten the biggest Christmas present in the entire world. "Come on Sammy!"_

_Sam's eyes bugged out of the words. He stared down at the pool like it was a million feet down. His Batman cape felt like a lead vest and the knot at his neck like it was choking him._

"_Come on!" Dean called down again, moving back from the trashcan so he wouldn't be in the shot. "It's fun, I promise- Just jump!"_

_Now Sam had barely cleared five last month. But there were things, important things,that he learned in those five years. That the best way to sleep in the backseat of the car was with his sneakers pressed flat against the door and his arm hanging off the seat; that Uncle Bobby made the best chilli, and that Dean was the best, the most _awesome _big brother in the whole world, and when Dean said things were fun, _they were fun.

_And even though Sam was scared, it _looked _like fun. It looked like Dean was flying before he fell into the water, and Sam was a superhero too, and he wanted to fly just like Dean._

_Sam took five steps backwards on the roof, he felt the heat of the metal come up through his sneakers. He reached up and made sure that his Batman cape was still on and that his mask was still mostly drawn on his face, then he took off in a run, stretching his arms out straight in front of him._

_For the first second after he jumped, it felt like he was flying, a warm wind blew in his hair, and he wasn't holding onto anything, and he was awesome just like Dean, and he couldn't wait to see just _how _ awesome he was on the movie that thety were making._

_But then Brownie barked a big thunderous sound, and it startled Sam, and he tried to run away, except he was still falling, and the only thing that there was to grab onto was the roof before it went too far away from him._

_But when Sam did that, his arm stayed in one spot and his body kept falling, and he was hanging like a bent nail in a board, and loud cracking sound and so much pain happened and it all hurt too much and he cried out and let go, and fell onto his face in the pool, and his legs in the grass._

"_Sammy!" Dean ran around the trash can over to his brother in a splash of water._

**xxxxxXxxxx**

**2014**

"Sammy!"

The teeth sank in clear down to the bone and a blinding hot pain radiated all down Sam's right side like someone had shot molten lava into his veins. Blood ran down from where her teeth met his skin, trickling down to his fingers, making the knife sink down slickly down his fist. He tried to grab it, but she was clamped to his forearm, constricting the muscles that allowed his fingers to open.

Her growl became fiercer and the world jerked hard left and right as she yanked his arm sideways like she wanted to rip it apart. A sickening '_snap' _resonated above all the thunder and the molten lava pain whited out his senses and he felt himself being pitched in the air.

Dean heard the thick crack of Sam's bone and the noise competed for his own scream as the massive dog lifted Sam up like he weighed nothing and flung him up high into the air and away and Sam tumbled and rolled end over end across the roof, the knife flung away across the roof in the rain.

The building was old, built during a reconstruction project of the city in the 1950's, and it's concrete barricade had half caved in from Hurricane Andrew, leaving a hole torn into the night that began to pound in heavy rain. Sam flipped and rolled like a sack of bones until he came to a stop half over the edge of this hole, gravity clawed at his legs and jerked him off the roof and he vanished through the rain.

"_Sam!"_ Dean shouted over pounding sheets of the storm, watching as the giant dog skulked over to the edge of the rooftop and peered over it in a growl that reeked of pure anger and hate, like she wasn't finished.

Dean shot to his feet in and grabbed his fallen iron knife. The rain pounded on him like bullets turning the world into water. His boots were slick on the wet concrete; but he ran anyway and reached the edge and slashed his knife into the side of the dog's belly.

She wailed and turned to in a full angered growl, her eyes now the color of raw copper melting on a fire. A stream of dark chocolate colored blood poured of her side that smelled thickly of Nightshade and Wolfs Bane. She howled at Dean in complete hatred and her massive body dissolved into a whirlwind of golden dust and bright light that sucked inward like a vortex.

Dean's knife dropped into a clatter on the rooftop. He abandoned it there and ran the last two steps over the ledge. Sam was gripping to the bricked window sill a two feet below with his left arm arm, his other arm was pooling trails of blood that ran and dripped down his fingertips. Ten stories below came the sound of traffic trying to work its way through the storm.

"Sammy!" Dean flattened himself into a crouch, gripping one hand to the wall, the other he reached out. "C'mon!"

The rain that slammed into Sam's face nearly blinded him, the ledge in his grip was too small for his fingers. Dean's hand dangled a hand length away from him. His broken arm poured blood into the traffic below, when he moved it just an inch pain shredded and ate through him. But then he felt his fingers begin to slide loose off the window sill, and he threw his arm up with a guttural scream and reached out and grabbed Dean's hand.

Dean closed his fingers around Sam's wrist and was jerked down flat against the roof in a hard slam by Sam's weight. He threw his hand back up against the wall, holding to the lip of the roof against the crumbled wall to stop his momentum, and pulled up against the gravity that tried to swallow Sam, hearing as Sam screamed below him.

"Don't let go, you understand me!" Dean shouted over his brother's scream and the pounding rain. He pulled again, and felt the force of Sam pushing up as much as he could. Dean's arms burned, his precarious grip on the ledge was slipping. He heard the sounds of Sam's broken bones crumble and crack at his force, but he kept pulling until Sam's head emerged up over the side of the hole. Dean released his hand and grabbed the back of Sam's soaking wet shirt and hauled him up over the crumbled hole.

Sam rolled in a heap beside Dean like the rain had birthed him onto the rooftop. His right arm was the color of blood, soaking half up the fabric of his gray t-shirt sleeve

Dean pulled a wet bandana out of his soaking wet jacket. Sam's arm was covered in shredded puncture marks, but they were long and there were too many of them, so rather than try to cover them all he wound the fabric around Sam's arm just above the top of the ripped apart flesh as a tourniquet.

Dean tied the knot as tight as he was able to, then went tighter still. Sam grunted and writhed in agony, his blood turning the rainwater on the rooftop bright red. He tried to pull Dean's hand away, a _'stop!'_ caught agonizingly in his throat.

Dean turned behind him to the metal fire escape stairs he and Sam had climbed earlier, that now swayed and moved in the wind of the pelting rain. He whipped his head back around and spotted a stairwell access door to the building five feet from them It was shaped like a shed with a slanted roof, it's waterlogged wooden door was padlocked with a heavy looking chain.

Dean pulled out his gun, now the same color as the sky outside. "Hold on little brother!" He released Sam's arm to Sam calling out after him as he ran through the water that was now almost over the top of his shoes. He stopped half a foot away from the door and aimed and fired a shot in all the rain that blew the lock off the door. He ripped apart the chains with both hands, the metal fell into puddle with the rainwater. He pulled on the door, the wet wood resisted with a warped tug, Dean jerked harder and the door was sent flapping open and smacking against the enclosure revealing an unlit stairwell that was heavy with a musty, unused smell.

Dean abandoned the emptiness, snatched up their fallen iron knives and ran back over Sam. "C'mon, c'mon!" he pulled Sam to his feet by his undamaged arm, and pulled and pushed him over to the stairwell.

Sam's uneven gait tried to keep up the movement gone half dumb from the shock until they both stumbled to the stairwell and he tumbled after Dean into the yawning blackness.


	4. Chapter 4

**xxxxxXxxxx**

"_You'd take care of your little brother? You'd do anything for him?"_

"_Yeah I would."_

-Michael and Dean Winchester

"Supernatural." Episode: "Something Wicked"

**xxxxXxxxx**

* * *

><p><strong><em>1987<em>**

_The bike groaned and creaked with each pedal Dean pushed it through, the handlebars swiveled under the weight of his little brother who was lying on the crossbar, his black Batman cape half squashed under his butt, the rest of it trailing under Dean's front wheel. _

_Dean pedaled the bike with one hand, the other he had pressed on Sam's elbow to keep the kid's arm still. Sam's left arm was bent in a crooked angle, his t-shirt and hair were soaked from pool water, and his cheeks were soaked with tears that came on each time Dean had to hold tighter to keep Sam from moving. _

_Dean's tires sank in a jerk into a pothole down the road and Sam cried out and tried to pull back._

"_Stay still Sammy!" Dean commanded over the sound of his bike's rusted squeaking and Sam's crying. He tightened his grip on Sam's small arm. "We're almost there, it's going to be okay!" _

"_Dean," Sam's tears made his voice sound like he'd swallowed cotton balls. Saying Dean's name made him cry harder because he was five and hurt and didn't know what else to do._

"_Almost there," Dean promised again. "Be brave for five more minutes Sammy, just _five _more minutes man okay?" Dean pedaled harder even though his legs felt like Jell-O and cars were honking at them because he wasn't on the sidewalk. But none of them stopped to help the boy who rode with his crying brother on his handlebars in the middle of the road. Dean kept up his chain or reassurances to Sam, pedaling the bike down the small chain of houses, through main street, until he saw the blue sign with the white 'H' printed in the middle of it. He pedaled right up to the wide concrete entrance with the white roof that said 'Eustace General.', stopping in front of a set of automatic glass doors. _

_He dropped his feet and set his kickstand down in almost a singular movement and grabbed Sam down from the bike who clutched his arm tightly against him. "Come on Sammy, come on!" Dean pulled his crying brother through the doors that dinged when he walked through them and blasted them both with cold air that smelled like antiseptic and pizza from the cafeteria. _

_He stood in a wide tiled lobby with two huge information desks on either side, a long line of silver elevators behind those. People were packed into chairs for the X-ray department and Billing Department. Blue signs hung overhead pointing to different areas of the hospital hidden away from where they stood. 'Cafeteria', 'Restroom.' 'Emergency Room' was the last sign done in red pointing down a long white hallway just past a group of ugly looking pastel colored chairs. Dean realized that he came in the wrong way to the hospital. _

_He cursed himself and quickly turned to his brother: "The ER is that way Sammy," Dean pointed to where the sign pointed. "Come on-"_

"_My arm hurts Dean-" Sam broke in with a pain-filled cry. "I don't wanna walk anymore, I don't wanna be Batman anymore-" fat tears fell down his face and his cry turned into a high pitched sob that caught the attention of the a nurse coming out of the direction the cafeteria sign was pointing too. _

_She walked with a purpose towards them and bent down towards Sam. "What's wrong sweetie?" She touched Sam with a cold hand and he jerked, his tears turning black from the melting Magic Marker. "I can help you, I'm a nurse, see?" she pointed to the plastic badge that was hanging from a clip on her blue uniform, and she smiled in a friendly helpful way._

_But Sam was still scared, his arm hurt, and the magic marker was starting to make his eyes sting. He backed away from her again, and right into Dean who had to catch him before he tipped backwards on his soggy sneakers._

"_Take it easy Sammy," Dean grabbed Sam's shoulders and held him in place despite Sam's wiggling to escape. "She's not going to hurt you-" Dean turned his eyes up to the nurse with the long blonde ponytail. "He gets like this when he's scared." Dean was using his most adult like voice, which was the one he used whenever Sam was hurt and he was left in charge – which meant that he used it a lot. _

_The nurse nodded like she understood. "Sammy?" she said his name like she was testing it out like a new flavor of ice cream. _

_Sam had nowhere to escape anymore thanks to Dean having him in a tight grip, and because moving made arm hurt worse. So he was stuck staring up at the nurse, with water dripping off of his still wet hair, trying to be brave enough to answer her._

_The nurses' ponytail swayed gently as she bent her head lower to look at him. "Can you tell me what happened? If you tell me I can help you."_

_When Sam didn't say anything the nurse turned her attention to Dean. "Do you know what happened?"_

**xxxxXxxxx**

**2014**

An ER was not always an adrenaline pumping place like it was depicted on TV. There were some days where the shifts crawled and the most serious cases on hold in the bay was a case of bad lobster induced food poisoning and a girl who stuck a marble up both nostrils.

Dean put an end to this kind of day when he pushed his way through the ambulance bay doors, shoving hard past a paramedic team pushing a patient inside on a gurney. The paramedics gave Dean a fierce look for almost knocking their patient over. But Dean's look was a predatory thing as he dragged Sam more under his power than under any of Sam's.

"What happened?!" A nurse in dark blue scrubs spotted them in the twilight quiet of the ER and rushed from behind her paperwork strewn on her desk. Another nurse followed suit, both running to the sight of Dean dragging Sam through the hallways of the Miami city trauma center, a dragline of Sam's blood trailed behind them.

"A stray dog attacked him in an alleyway-" Dean lowered Sam down closer so the much shorter nurse could get a look at his arm. Sam's legs shook like the only thing keeping them up was the knowledge that collapsing onto a linoleum floor on a torn and frayed arm would hurt more than any effort standing up would cause.

Despite the look of Sam's injuries, the first nurse who had spotted them looked at Dean like he was lying through his face. But she dampened it with her next professional question: "How many?"

"One," Dean fired off so fast it was like a gun ejected hot from bullet.

Sam's arm was shredded like pulled meat for barbeque, his skin was completely red with blood, Dean's improvised tourniquet had failed halfway through his 110 mile an hour drive through storm drenched streets looking for the nearest hospital. Sam's face was bone pale, and his entire body shuddered in the crushing grip of hypovolemia.

The nursed looked at Dean, incredulous. "One dog did all that?"

"We don't have time for this just fix him!" Dean yelled, turning the nurses' curiosity nonexistent. The look on his face was desperation sliced into a full protective anger.

The nurse seemed to come back to the fact that she was a nurse in the ER of a Level One Trauma center.

She called for a gurney that arrived so fast it was almost telepathic. She shoved Sam down on it as best as she could and Dean hefted Sam's rain drenched denim legs onto the thin blue sheet on top of the thin gurney that received his weight with a harsh rattle.

"We're setting him up in trauma room three!"

Sam's vision went from a haze of cloudiness to a bright shocking red as a pair of small hands pressed down hard onto his torn flesh.

Two more nurses joined in the commotion and Sam felt his shirt ripped away under gloved hands and metal scissors that exposed an arm that was now more blood then flesh.

Halogen lights assaulted like ice picks into Sam's eyes, sounds around him tunneled and the world jarred like a realist film documentary. Something rough was wiped across his arm, soaking up puddles of blood revealing the dark red of the underside of flesh and a gleam of white bone through the deepest part of red.

The sound and the world came back from their chaotic dance in the same moment Sam saw the exposed gleam of his bones webbed thickly with clotting blue veins half gone black from something pumping deep inside of him. Sam watched it move up his arm like a black snake and a raw thick burning, like someone had injected him with battery acid. He arched up off the table in a scream so horrendous that it took him moments to realize it had come from him.

"Sam!"

"His pressure's gone! He needs surgery right now or he's going to lose the arm!"

"_Sammy!"_

The pain was the kind that wasn't designed to be taken, it was meant to overwhelm until the only thought was ending it, ending it all. It was a kind that Sam had experienced before, many, many times before in a cage as white as the bone that had been ripped open from his flesh. Sam opened his eyes to the shock of the world that was too bright, and too painful as nurses and doctors in scrubs sprayed with his blood tried to keep him alive.

Over the head of a nurse in thick red curls and plastic goggles stood another nurse just watching the scene, with hair a burnt chocolate color and eyes that flashed copper. She smiled widely at him.

"Dean!" Sam's voice was the sound of a gargle full of glass.

The doctors and nurses around him were rushing to move monitors and unlock the brakes of the gurney he was on. But over all this commotion Dean answered to the inflection in his name, the one that meant: _turn around._

Dean turned so quickly he almost knocked over a pulse ox monitor that a frantic nurse was trying to make mobile. His eyes tracked this emptiness for where the things hid to create it. Besides this nurse there was nothing their but the empty hallway and the din of nurses in ER bays further down.

Dean turned back around to Sam's head thrown back against the gurney in agony. A nurse leaned over him and shot a syringe into his IV line that threw Sam completely limp in three seconds.

"Sam- _Sammy!-"_ Dean shoved his way into the nurses who tried to stop him. "What the hell did you do?"

"He can't wait to be sedated in the ER," a doctor in scrubs the same color as the nurses, marred with bright red blood said over his shoulder as he didn't even look at Dean as he kicked the brakes off the gurney's wheels. "Let's _move _ people! We're redlining him to the OR!" the doctor said this more to the nurses and techs than to Dean. "The nurses will show you where you can wait."

Dean didn't have a chance to object, to say anything as the bed rails of the gurney were raised up and Sam was pushed out behind a blur of people in blue scrubs, leaving one behind to show him where the waiting room was.

Dean half listened to her, eyes following the gurney with his brother being taken from him on it. A moment later he felt the hairs on the back of his neck raise like something was watching. He turned around with his knife dropped low in his hand, to again face an empty hallway.

"Sir?"

The nurse's voice turned Dean back around, concealing the knife back up his sleeve at the same moment.

The lingering smell of Wolfspane hung just over the air of hospital antiseptic.


	5. Chapter 5

**xxxxxXxxxxx**

"_It takes ten times as long to put yourself back together as it does to fall apart."_

~Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay

**xxxxXxxxxxx**

* * *

><p><strong><em>1987<em>**

_The hospital gurney practically swallowed Sam. The nurse who had found him and Dean had taken the top of Sam's costume off and given him a gown had pictures of clowns on it._

_A social worker sat in a brown chair by the gurney with the stuffing half clawed out of its back. She had big hair the color of sand and half-moon shaped glasses and she kept asking Dean questions while nurses and one doctor poked and prodded at Sam's arm until he cried._

"_You boys live with your father?"_

"_Yeah," Dean tried to block out the sounds of Sam crying and also tried to swallow the remark that obviously sounded rude to the woman in gray tweed because she glared at him over her glasses. "Yes ma'am," Dean tried again the most polite voice that he could because people from Social Services had enough connections that could take Sam and Dean away from their dad and put them far away from each other. "We just moved here two weeks ago."_

_The woman wrote all this down on a white legal pad with a barely legible hand._

"_You were playing home alone at the time your brother fell off the shed." The words weren't a question. She removed her glasses in the way adults did right before they wanted to ask something that they deemed was important. "Where is you father?"_

"_Working." Dean replied falling into the lie he told every overly curious social worker, or school administrator as to why he and Sam were left alone. "He works odd jobs during the day-" _

"_And he left you boys home without _any _supervision?" the woman seemed disgusted at the idea that didn't fit into what she considered normal in the town of Eustace. "What about your mother?"_

"_She's dead."_

_The social worker's mask of anger seemed to cool just a bit at the remark. "I'm sorry."_

"_He's coming back!" Dean argued in a voice that outweighed his age. He had yet had the chance to call their dad and tell them what had happened. The change in his jeans pocket seemed to burn with the fear of having to tell his dad that Sam got hurt on _his _watch. "He's coming home in two hours, he told me-"_

"_How often does your father leave you and your younger brother home without anyone to watch you?"_

_A high pitched wail tore Dean's head around and he saw Sam trying to climb off the gurney, the clown hospital gown getting caught in the hands of the nurses who tried to keep him still._

"_You have to sit still sweetie!-"_

"_No," Sam's Batman mask was now just a black splatter on his face from tears and sweat. "I wanna go home-I wanna go home with Dean!"_

_Sam's crying became too much for Dean to listen to and he pushed between the nurses and sat down on the edge of the hospital bed and grabbed at Sam's good arm. "Sammy, you have to sit still dude, they just want to help you-"_

"_They took my cape-" Sam said brokenly, grabbing at the gown with the clowns on it, he _hated _clowns._

"_We'll get you another one," Dean promised. "You said you didn't want to be Batman anymore anyway remember?" Dean tried to smile for Sam's sake._

_Sam started to cry for real, like he didn't want to remember. "I want to go home-"A mess of snot ran down into his Batman mask and the hospital gown that seemed to swallow him. He threw himself on Dean, broken arm and all. "I wanna go home Dean!-"_

_Dean slid Sam into as comforting of a hug as he could around Sam's broken arm, and the too big hospital gown, feeling like a bad big brother for causing all of this. "They have to look at you first Sammy? Okay? They have to look at your arm, and then we can go home." Dean looked down at his brother. "But you have to be still or they can't make you better."_

_The social worker was watching this and writing things down while the nurses and doctors finally gave into what was seeming to work best and worked around Sam's grip on Dean to assess him. With some coaxing from Dean they managed to check Sam's arm with a portable X ray machine and discovered a big break in the large bone at the bottom of his arm. Sam wasn't entirely calm through the whole process, and he managed to soak the fabric of Dean's shirt in tear puddles. But Dean never said anything cause Sam was just a little guy and he was the big brother. After all the X rays and questions were done and Sam was somewhat settled, Dean managed to sweet talk a nurse into using the phone behind the nurses station to finally call their dad._

_He wasn't happy. _

_Every other word Dean heard was a swear, the kinds reserved for when he and Uncle Bobby drank too much when they played cards. He told Dean to stay the hell where he was and he was coming back in a few hours. Dean gave a quick 'Yes Sir' and had hung up before any other words could be exchanged. _

_One of the nurses at the station gave him a sympathetic look that he ignored as he moved past the nurses station and back into the little curtained off room where Sam was still asleep from the drugs they gave him with a thick white cast wrapped halfway up his arm, which rested against his clown hospital gown. The social worker was gone, but Dean saw her less than well-proportioned shadow behind the stripped curtain as he made his way to Sam's hospital bed._

_Sam looked even smaller than he was with the huge cast glued to his broken arm. His Batman mask had been wiped off his face, but lines of black still rung his eyes like someone had pranked him; he looked completely pathetic._

_Which made Dean very upset. _

_He didn't like Sam to look so, _little_ and _broken. _He was the big brother, he was supposed to keep Sam safe and happy and he failed, he turned Batman against his own brother. _

_Dean stared at his sleeping little brother. "Dad's gonna be here soon Sammy," Dean tried to sound more happy about that fact then he felt in case Sam wasn't truly asleep and could hear him. "Everything's gonna be okay." He laid his hand ever so gently on Sam's casted arm "you'll see."_

**xxxxXxxxx**

**2014**

The hallway was long and white, which often caused a kind of line sickness for the workers who paced it at endless intervals during their 8, 12, or 15 hour shifts. One such employee, a nurse who had barely worked there three months was in the middle of such a hallway, the traction bumps at the bottom of his sneakers squeaked as he made his way across the opaque white tiled floor, two saline bags tucked under his arm, three IV catheters in his free hand, and a wedge of a stale sandwich in his mouth.

He had barely had time to sit and eat lunch before five out of his eight patients needed to have their fluid bags changed, and two blew out their IV's and needed to be changed out, and everyone on the floor who could have possibly assisted in the assload of crap all had to miraculously attend a continuing education class in the conference room. Which basically left him alone with over a dozen patients and no back up, so basically it was the perfect shift.

His foot slid against the linoleum and the contents that were tucked precariously against the folds and crevices of his arms were all flung to the floor.

He cursed something that was muffled in the bread of his sandwich, bending down to swipe the small, hermetically sealed needles and the IV bags. One bag rolled down a foot from him. He dropped the needle packages in the pocket of his scrub top and walked over to the stray IV bag. He stooped over to retrieve it and was met with another pair of sneakers standing just behind the clear fluid bag.

He glanced up and the sandwich fell out of his mouth at the sight of another nurse in celadon green scrubs, a slender, curved woman with a pile of hair the color of dark chocolate and dark eyes over a smile that was too damn stunning to be allowed to co-exist with the rest of her already gorgeous features.

He was stunned into such a shocked awe that he just stood there like an idiot while she bent down and retrieved his fallen IV bag.

"Drop something?"

"Yeah," He found it hard to speak without choking on his own drool. He took the IV bag from her hand and picked up the sandwich that he had dropped. "Thanks. It's a madhouse around here today. Everyone else bailed for a knee replacement conference for free Einstein Bagels. I've been chasing my tail all shift."

She smiled at him, one that could've lit up an entire city with how bright it was. "I know the feeling."

"I'm Jason," he held out his hand, which she took. Her hand was soft and smooth on the top, but rough on the bottom like someone who had done manual labor with only their palms. But even her _hands_ were still amazing. He looked around her arm, trying to find a name tag; but it was turned over so only the list of Codes and Department extensions were visible inside lanyard sleeve around her neck.

She didn't bother to reciprocate her name to him and he dropped his hand. "So, you work on this floor? I mean I haven't seen you around the nurse's station before."

For some reason she seemed to find his words amusing, and her smile widened. "I've been here a lot longer than you honey."

The way she said 'honey' was so sassy and dripped with seduction that he reciprocated her amused look. "Is that the truth?" Whatever perfume she wore smelled _amazing_, some kind of heavy floral scent. It was then that he noticed something that he hadn't before, a stain of dark blood on her scrubs just under her left arm. "Hey, are you okay?"

She looked down at her uniform like she was just noticing a mosquito bite. "Patient came down in the ED with a fork jammed in his penis, apparently his girlfriend caught him cheating. This was the most pleasant thing he was squirting."

"_Ouch,"_ he hissed. "You win the shitty day contest."

"You really know how to flatter a girl," she returned with a laughing kind of smile.

"Yeah?" He leaned over to her, close enough to see bejeweled golden pins in her hair. "Well, if you give me a hand here baby, after we're done we can head down to the ambulance bay and you can give me a hand with something else."

Something weird happened with the lighting because her eyes _glowed_ under them.

"Sorry _baby_-" She reached out grabbed his arm in a bone crushing hold that made him scream, a scream that was muffled by something needle like slashing its way across his throat, opening his trachea wide in a fountain of blood.

Her eyes glowed again a solid copper. "I never play with my dinner." Her mouth opened to a set of huge canines and fangs and she tore into his throat that pumped warm blood, ripping and tearing until there was nothing left of him but a pile of bones and blood soaked scrubs. She wiped the blood off of her mouth with the back of her hand, making a face. "Hospital food is disgusting." She hissed and lifted up her shirt to a knife wound running across her left hip. She bent down and dipped a hand in the blood puddled at her feet and smeared some of it into her wound like a salve, hissing again, licking what was left off of her fingers like chocolate.

She picked up all the bloody bones and clothes and dumped them in a red biohazard bin, before continuing her journey down the hallway.

**xxxxXxxx**

The walls were the color of buttercream icing after someone threw it up and the TV was turned onto to some show that Oprah made even after she swore she was off the air, and the only thing that restrained Dean from punching a hole clean through it was the cagey feeling that wouldn't allow him to sit still long enough to do so.

He stared at the non-descript wall clock. Sam had been in surgery for two hours, and no one had come out to give him any updates, which meant that it was bad if they couldn't spare one person from the OR. He had tried to barge himself into the OR to make sure that the only ones in there were _people_, but he had been shoved out, at a security guard's .9 millimeter out into waiting room, and the same guard sat like a sentry in a tan uniform like he was waiting for Dean to give in a reason to draw his weapon.

A little girl in blonde pig tails sat in the blue chairs that smelled like dust and coffee next to a woman with bags under her eyes. Both the girl and what Dean assumed was her mother eyed his blood stained clothes and the way he paced with wary expressions.

The room was littered with wilted ferns and old volumes of _Time _magazine shoved haphazardly into wooden racks on the wall next to a soda machine.

Dean walked up to the machine, feeding it money, and pushed one of the dispenser buttons. The machine whirred, but nothing dropped out; Dean pushed the button again, then again, eyeing the security guard, who was eyeing him with an untrusting gaze.

He made a show of bumping his fist against the machine before walking towards the glass door to the waiting room. The security guard moved in his way.

"Look man, I watched something almost kill my brother, and now he's in there fighting to keep his arm, so I'd like to get a damn Coke if that'd be alright with you." Dean put on the voice that he'd used a million times when he had to get past authority figures to see his brother, only this time he wasn't a kid anymore, so he had to let the weariness that was already there bleed into his eyes and his words and dare this security guard to try and stop him. The girl and her mother stared up at him again, but the mom's eyes lost her judgmental look.

The guard stared Dean down, but backed away from door and Dean passed through it with a hiss of the hydraulics.

He was now standing in a wide hallway with a tile floor speckled with gray, a group of nurses sat behind a desk, some talking to a doctor in blue scrubs others drinking coffee from white Styrofoam and laughing, obviously on a break. Dean saw the security guard still eyeing him, so he stopped at the nurses' station, talking to a nurse with long dark curls in a high ponytail.

"Scuse me, the vending machine in there is on the fritz, where's the next best place to get some carbonated caffeine?"

"Oh sure honey," the nurse was an older woman who eyed Dean up and down like someone who knew what weariness looked like when worn on a man. "The cafeteria is down on the first floor-"

"Is there anything closer?" Dean laid on the weary charm, which wasn't really necessary because he really _was_ weary and worried, but he was also watching. "My brother's having surgery and I don't really want to leave-"

The nurse fell under the spell of Dean's green eyed look. "Tell you what, the break room's just on the other side of this wall, you can use our machine."

"Thank you," Dean drew out his gratitude and started to walk towards where the nurse had pointed, waiting a doctor leaned over to talk to the woman before he ducked inside the break room quickly to snag a red can of Coke before stepping back out into the hallway.

He passed nurses in scrubs, doctors, patients in white gowns moving stiffly in metal walkers and dragging IV poles behind him. There was no way he could make himself go unnoticed, he was 6'1", his clothes were stained in rain soaked blood and his boots resonated with a squeak as he walked over the white tile. So he instead simply made himself part of the environment he was in, popping the top of the soda can and taking a slow drag from it, looking back and forth between the opened hospital rooms like he was anxious. All the while, his eyes darted back and forth, looking for a flash of gold and copper amongst all the taupe walls and the gray hospital gowns.

Several nurses made eye contact with him, and he returned this gazes just long enough so that they would hold it long enough in return to lose any suspicion that they had of him. He discovered that the hallway was built like a running track, traveling into a loop of nurses' stations and patient rooms where monitors and voices wafted into the antiseptic and coffee laden air. He reached midway to the end of this loop, only a foot away were the doors to the waiting room, but just a handful of steps down were several OR suite rooms.

Movement in one of them caught his eye, several nurses in light green scrubs were removing bloodied rags and instruments from the operating table, while another group of nurses pushed a gurney out through the door.

The door opened automatically on hydraulics and the front end of a head with dark, lax hair was pushed out.

"Sam-" Dean abandoned his soda can to drop into a splash of bubbles on the floor and reached the gurney with a hard squeak of his shoes.

Sam was buried in blankets halfway down his body. His right arm was held in traction by a black metal contraption of rods screwed into the top and bottom part of his lower arm.

"Sam," Dean gripped the edges of the gurney to keep them from moving, much to the nurses disapproval. "Sam, hey-" Dean looked over to the nurse in a blue buffount cap covering a dark shade of hair. "What happened?"

"Dr. Gillespie reset his arm," the nurse spoke her words under her white surgical mask.

"The break was messy," a woman beside the nurse in a green surgical cap continued leaving Dean to assume that she was Dr. Gillespie. "His radius was shattered into pieces, _luckily _the pieces were big enough so I was able to reattach them, the next twenty four hours is critical in determining if he regains full use of the arm. The thing that has me most concerned is the infection."

Dean's head whipped up to the doctor at the word. "What infection?"

"It's nothing like I've ever seen before," the doctor spoke gravely. "His blood has high traces of some kind of opiate poisoning we got him on Narcan to reverse it, as well as vasoconstrictors to try and slow it down from reaching his heart-" her next words were spoken slowly. "Are you sure this was a dog attack?"

Dean sensed the tension and accusation in her voice. "What the hell are you accusing me of?-"

"Nothing," Gillespie returned in all honesty. "The amount of opiates in his blood are _very _high. There were no traces of needle marks on him, and you'd have to force three bottles of Percocet down his throat to equal the levels on his labs-"

"If he's got that much narc in him, why isn't he _dead?"_ Dean almost had to choke the last words out like he was trying to regurgitate a butcher knife.

"I don't know," the surgeon responded. "Whatever this is, it seems to be slow acting, I've contacted animal control to search for this dog, it needs to be destroyed before it infects anyone else. I'm also waiting to call the CDC-"

"Listen I'm going to need to hold off on that-" Dean said.

"We're dealing with an _unknown _player here, if this dog bites anyone else-"

Dean quickly pulled out his fake FBI badge and waved it in her face. "My partner and I are looking into it."

The doctor staff looked at him. "You're a _Fed_? I thought you said he was your brother?"

"He's both, look I don't have time to talk logistics with you, I just need you to trust me and hold off calling anyone."

The doctor stared down Dean like she was unsure if she should completely buy into his words, or even buy them at all. But the authority in Dean's eyes was real, as well as the weariness. She glanced around the corners of the hallway like she was afraid of being overheard. "You get one day – if there's a chance of an outbreak I have to make sure to contain it, understand?"

"As long as you do," Dean countered, watching the doctor shift her eyes to him in an angered laced gaze at being 'handled' before turning her attention to the staff that was standing like a sentry around Sam's gurney.

"Get vitals on him hourly, and run toxicology screens on his blood each time as well." Dr. Gillespie turned to Dean, "It'll be a few minutes before we settle your brother into a room in the CCU-"

"I'm coming with you-"

"The Critical Care Unit is small Agent, Visitors aren't allowed until the transfer to the floor is complete," the doctor said almost curtly, as Dean looked at her with a 'come on' gaze. "You're welcome to wait in the post op lobby, someone will come get you once Sam is settled-"

"Listen Doc, no offense, I know you're just doing your job," Dean cut in. "But I'm coming with you whether you give me permission or not. Now how you deal with that is up to you."

Dr. Gillespie stared at Dean's challenge like it was a physical presence in the room standing next to him, she looked a breath away from answering the challenge by calling security and having his ass thrown back out into the downpour outside. But in the end she sidestepped him, allowing him his request. "Page me when his labs are back."

The OR scrub nurse shook her head and began to pull Sam's gurney down the white hallway, with Dean following closely behind.

**xxxxXxxxx**

She remembered the first moment she had smelled her first real whiff of human fear. It was back during a festival for Apollo in Athens. A bunch of warriors had just come back from slaughtering their Roman neighbors and the men were sweaty, loud and drunk on dozens of jugs of Manilaria wine, and the Temple of Apollo had seen more than its fair share of sex for a group of supposed virgin priestess that kept it.

It had made it easy to walk right in among all the horizontal bodies and clanging, writhing breast plates.

One of the warriors, a fledgling barely out of having his mother change his loin cloth had grabbed her and sniffed her up and down intoxicated by her Hemlock odor.

She had been young then too, barely 50 years old, and had led him away from the bright light of the braziers to an inky dark alleyway beside the temple to keep them from being discovered. He had started to fondle her breasts under her white robes and kissed her mouth so hard she felt his teeth clanging against hers.

She had heard the blood pounding up through his pumping heart, and she was inexperienced enough to have not a single hunt under belt. She had been learning with her brother until 6 months prior and then he had left her to scout out her own territory.

So when this _boy_ had been gluttonizing her like a lazy mosquito drunk with the alcohol soaked blood of sleeping men, she had attacked him in voracious fervor, her canine incisors going down to bite hungrily at a chunk of his ear.

The boy had pulled away at the bite, and pawed at the red flesh on his hands, and had stared at her, calling her a servant of Hades, backing slowly away to the temple.

An overpowering odor had filled her nostrils, pouring off the young soldier like sweat; and it had activated her full hunter instincts; he could not get away, she _would _have him. Her eyes had turned molten copper in the darkness, as she had turned into her second form and ripped into the boy's back before he had been able to scream for very long.

Since then she had many other conquests, many other hunts, _centuries and centuries _of them. She had crossed paths with Hunters, and their predecessors before they called themselves that, and she had hunted eaten her fair share of them, never enough to draw attention. But not since that first solo night 2,000 years ago had she felt the same _orgasmic_ feeling hunting – until tonight.

She stared at her face in the small hanging mirror above the sink and her expression gave her a gleeful smile in return as she turned on the faucet and rinsed the blood that coated her hands like gloves down the drain, pulling her scrub top over her head. The wound on her hip was still jagged and visible and her smile vanished as she touched it with a hiss. She bent forward and slid out of her pants, down to a pair of bra and underwear the color of night shade berries. Two huge paw print tattoos with bared claws sat on the back of each of her shoulders, and down the center of her back was a line of tufted black fur matted with dried blood.

She turned on the faucet spray higher and cupped water into her palms letting it trickle all down her back, moving down on all fours to shake the red dyed water off her fur, her figure shifting back and forth from human canine like flickering lights in agitated pain.

A heavy knock came on the door.

"Excuse me?-"

She turned to the door, shifting fully back to human. "Be out in a second!"

The nurse on the other side of the door pressed her ear against it and knocked again with a hard knuckle wrap. "You're not supposed to lock this door, it's an OSHA violation!"

She rolled her eyes in annoyance and a low growl escaped her throat.

The small nurse jumped back when the door flung open inwards revealing a dark haired nurse with wet hair in a pair of ceil blue scrubs with damp shoulders, a warm, bright smile on her face.

"Hi."

The nurse outside the door stepped back at the greeting because it sounded _very_ perky. "They send you up for the staff shortage? One of our guys just bailed right in the middle of his shift, management is _not_ happy-"

"Sure did," she returned moving her hand up underneath her scrub top to smooth out the hackled fur on her back.

The nurse stared at her in and up and down fashion like she found something in her wanting. "Have you ever worked Critical Care before?"

"It was a while ago," she returned like it was an embarrassing admittance. "But it stays with you. You should see me clean out a wound."

The nurse took in her remark like it was a zit on her face. She peaked into the bathroom and saw puddles of water on the floor and shot her a crooked kind of look. "Were you _washing_ your hair?"

"Sorry," She said. "Guilty," she added a shoulder shrug for good measure. "This old guy got irate and flung the contents of his bed pan at me, apparently he had the creamed corn."

The nurse screwed up her face like she already knew what that kind of odor smelled like. "We already gave Third Shift Report, but come with me to the nurse's station and I'll give you the abridged version."

"Great," she responded, trying hard to not just rip the woman's larynx out of her neck to get her to shut up. "You can start by telling me if you've received a patient from the OR, he came in downstairs to the ER with a dog bite to the arm."

The nurse's eyes blinked at the abruptness in her voice like it was a flicker of an annoying light bulb. She walked down small white hallway to the nurse station that was abandoned of anything and anyone but her, other nurse, empty computer chairs and monitors that flickered on screen savers. She sat down at a computer in the center of the station. "What's the name?"

"Last name's a mouthful," she said rounding the half circle of a desk and leaned over the white laminate where the nurse was seated fingers poised to type a name on the patient chart search field. "First name is Sam."

"That's a pretty common name honey, and it's not much to go on." The nurse said. She was a 15 year veteran of the hospital, and a bit of a hard ass around anything that she deemed as "shenanigans."

"He's far from common," she insisted. "Trust me, you'd know if he was here, 6'4, hazel eyes, delicious from every angle."

The nurse shot her a side eyed look, but did a first name search for every new patient sent up from the ER within the last few hours.

"Sam Wesson," the nurse read off her computer screen. "Admitted from the OR half an hour ago, Room L213 down the hall."

She smiled, feeling her canines drop down onto her tongue in a poised fashion. "Perfect." She turned to leave.

"Hey wait a minute!" the nurse stood up from her chair and sent it swiveling around.

She stopped walking, her eyes flashing molten in annoyance and turned around to face the woman practically wagging a finger in her face.

"I need to give you report on the other patients. This isn't a grocery store girly, you can't just pick and choose who you get to see."

"I didn't choose him, _girly,"_ She snapped, watching the woman get an offended shocked look on her face at being talked to in that manner. "He chose me," she blinked and her eyes turned copper and stayed that way. "I'm just answering the challenge."

The nurse backed away with a terrified gasp, smacking into the desk of the nurse' station.

"By the way, your guy, _he didn't bail_," she took more steps closer, slow and predatory. "I just needed to supplement before my main kill. Hunting is a pain in the ass in this century."

The nurse tried to run backwards over the nurses' station desk, but that was physically impossible and she soon found herself unable to breathe from fear. "What. _Are_. You?"

"Too evolved to waste my time drawing this out on something as mundanely _stupid_ as you," She stared at the nurse with solid copper eyes. The nails on her right hand grew out long and obsidian black and she raked them across the back of the nurses' head.

The nurse dropped to the ground, blood dampening her dark hair.

She blinked again and human eyes replaced the copper; she then reached out and grabbed the nurses' still form and dragged her back to her chair, propping her up at the so that her chin rested on her chest.

"Poor thing," she smoothed back her hair like a mother to a child. "Fell out of your chair trying to stay awake from a double shift," she made tsking noises and pulled bloody finger tips away from the woman's dark hair. "But it won't hurt, cause you won't wake up." She stood back up and walked down the hallway.

She found room L213 pretty easily, and peeked in through a foyer of glass cloaked in gray light and into the sliding Plexiglas door half covered by a white curtain. It wasn't a room so much as a cubicle with a long hospital bed filled with beeping monitors and bags of infusions.

And in the middle of it all lay her conquest, attached to all kinds of monitors like a dressed up dinner service. She smelled him through the door, along with her toxins working their way up his system.

The curtain moved back and the other hunter's form stood there, his hand was on a the handle of that damn blade just under his jacket and he was looking out the door into the hallway as she recessed back against the wall, just out of sight.

He looked left and right, staring for a long time in each direction like he knew that the hallways weren't really empty.

The hydraulics of the door opened and he stepped out into them, his other hand resting on gun, but he didn't move further than five steps away, backing back into the room as she watched him from where she had moved just behind a vending machine.

She watched him back inside the room slowly, and a part of her smiled at the prospect of the challenge.


	6. Chapter 6

**xxxxxXxxxx**

"_When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching - they are your family."_

~Jim Butcher

**xxxxXxxxx**

* * *

><p><strong><em>1987<em>**

"_What the hell were you _thinking _Dean?" John growled at Dean just out of earshot of the nurses at the station and Sam who lay asleep in a curtained off room from all the medicine they had given him to fix him arm. _

"_I'm sorry Sir," Dean looked his father right in the eye, chin out like a boxer prepared to take his blow squarely. "Me and Sam were just playing-"_

"Playing?" _John shook his head at his son in total disbelief. "Jumping off of shed roofs and getting your brother's arm busted, this is what passes for playing now a days?" His eyes were so heated they could've melted down steel._

"_I'm really sorry dad," Dean hung his eyes as low as they could go without losing his father's gaze entirely._

"_Yeah well a sorry isn't going to fix a damn thing, Dean!" _

_John's voice was so enraged that Dean swore he felt the floor vibrating with each word. He grabbed Dean by his arm and started to pull him away from the bed, but at that same moment the stripped curtain drew itself back and the face of the social worker peaked in on them with vulture like eyes._

_John lowered his grip on Dean and raised it up into a pat on Dean's shoulder instead. John pointedly ignored the social worker's eyes who didn't at all appreciate the gesture and turned to the nurse who was checking Sam's vitals on the little machine by his bed. "Excuse me, where's your cafeteria?"_

"_It's down on the first floor, just past the gift shop," the young blonde nurse responded in a kind voice._

_John said his thank you in a calm, polite grown up manner and turned to Dean. "Come on Dean, let's go grab a hamburger and let your brother sleep."_

_Dean wasn't at all excited about the idea of leaving Sam alone in a strange hospital. "Sammy might wake up while we're gone, and wonder where we are." He stared at Sam's face, drawn almost flat in sleep like his face was a deflated balloon, it made him look little and vulnerable and made a knot churn and grind its way inside his stomach. _

"_They gave him some pretty strong stuff to help take his pain away Dean," John spoke in a far more gentle voice than Dean expected considering the current issue with screwing up watching his brother. "He'll be watched over just fine until we come back." John placed an arm across Dean's shoulders and started to lead him away from the bed._

"_Excuse me Mr. Winchester," the social worker moved in front of John and Dean's path, blocking them with her big high heels and her even bigger curled hairdo. "Now that you're here I have a few questions that'd I'd like to ask you regarding your son's accident-"_

"_With all due respect Ma'am," John's voice still was polite, but it was beginning to have the edge to it that Dean had heard before when his dad had about had it with talking to someone. "I just got back from work to find out that my boys' were roughhousing against my rules and my youngest is in the hospital because of it, I'd like to grab something to eat with my boy here, figure out exactly what happened before anybody goes speculating on it first, I mean, if that's alright with you, since looking out for the wellbeing of families is your job."_

_The social worker started at John with a bit of a hackled raised look, like she knew she had been insulted somewhere in John's words, but didn't have enough evidence to come right out and accuse him of anything. She shifted her gaze lower to Dean, then across the way to where Sam was still asleep in a drugged obliviousness to everything that was going on, before finally settling back on John. _

"_I'll come back in an hour – will that be sufficient time to gather yourself Mr. Winchester?"_

_Dean watched his dad's look turn dangerous for just a moment that only he was able to see before it was replaced by his responsible adult normal dad face. _

"_Yes ma'am, that'll be fine." John squeezed Dean's shoulder, and Dean felt the firmness of the grip through his Superman shirt. "Come on son."_

_Dean took once last look at Sam asleep in the bed before he was pushed out of the curtained room and back into the white hallway where clusters of doctors and nurses and people visiting patients moved past them. _

_John kept walking with his hand secured on Dean until they reached a door marked: _'Gentlemen.' He_ opened the door and pushed Dean inside._

_The sound of water dripped off the white drywall from the air vents, ribbons of toilet paper hung off two of the three urinals and the faint odor of urine hung just under the scent of orange bathroom cleaner that tried to cover it up._

_John released Dean's shoulder by a white linoleum sink with a poster taped above it about the warning signs of Measles and walked over to a line of white bathroom stalls._

_Dean watched as his dad bent over each one, and pushed each door open to find nothing but toilet seats with their lids turned up. Once his dad saw that they were alone he walked over to the door to the bathroom and turned the bolt down to lock it._

_Dean hadn't moved at all while his dad had done all of these things and he watched until his dad turned back around to face him with the angry look that he had been holding back from the nurses and doctors._

"_I thought I told you to _watch _your brother!" John's voice was low so that they wouldn't be overhead, but it was no less heated. _

"_I was Sir," Dean said, trying to make his voice bigger than he felt, but standing in front of his father, it was a very hard thing to do. _

"_You call letting your brother get hurt and end up in the hospital with damn social services breathing down my neck _watching_ him?" John turned his head away from Dean like he was trying to cool his anger down before he screamed the paint off the walls._

"_Sammy wanted to play outside dad," Dean insisted. "He was bored sitting in the house and he said he wanted to do something fun."_

"_Sammy is _five, _Dean!" John's voice rose to a yell, and he immediately turned it down like the volume control on the radio in the Impala. "He wouldn't have thought about something as shitfaced dumb as jumping off a _shed _without help, he did it because of _you! _He idolizes you Dean, and it's your job to live up to that, not get your little brother hurt!"_

"_Dad I said I'm sorry," Dean felt his voice grow thick, and he swallowed it because it would only make things worse. His replayed the moment Sam fell into the grass, and his crying, and how scared Sam sounded in the Emergency Room while the doctors examined him over and over again. "It was my fault."_

"_Damn right it's your fault, Dean!" John agreed. He took a long drawn breath, like perhaps he had gone too far, but his words and the hurt in his son's eyes had already come out. He rubbed a hand across his beard that had gotten scragglier in the time he'd been away. "Here's what's going to happen-" He stared down at Dean. "We're going to get something from the cafeteria since I already told that woman from Social Services that we were; I can't have her raising any more hell. Then we wait until after dark and get Sam out of here during the night shift change."_

"_What about Sammy's arm dad?" Dean argued. "He was really crying about it hurting earlier."_

"_They gave him some medicine and a cast Dean," John said. "There's nothing else they can do, and I can't even afford the bill that's coming from _today's_ visit. Sammy will be okay, we'll take him to Uncle Bobby's, he can get better watching cartoons on Bobby's couch just as easily as he can in a 1,000 dollar a day hospital bed understand?" The last part was a rhetorical question because John never viewed his words to his sons as a democracy._

_Dean shook his head. "Yes Sir."_

_John shook his head. "Good." He set his hand on Dean's shoulder. "Come on, let's go get you a hamburger." He unlocked the bathroom door and after a single backward glance at Dean, Dean followed._

_They walked past the crowds of people and by reading brown signs overhead they were able to find the cafeteria, a large room shaped like an oval with a few potted palm trees sitting against the white walls._

_A long metal counter snaked its way against the walls curve at the head of the oval with a line of hair netted women standing behind steaming trays of food._

_John ushered Dean to this line and grabbed one of the black plastic trays from off a stack and dumped two piles of brown napkin wrapped silverware on them._

_The smell of creamed corn, mashed potatoes and carrots so overcooked they had turned tan wafted up Dean's nose. He scooted down the line slowly, trying not to make a face at all the things that didn't look any better that school cafeteria food, and in the case of the split pea soup scooped out into white Styrofoam containers, looked _worse.

"'_What can I get you hun?"_ _A woman in thick glasses, hair net weighed down by all of her heavy brown hair eyed Dean at her point in the line. She waved a pair of metal tongs over a teetering pile of mushy looking fried chicken and tan chunks of turnips._

"_Do you have any hamburgers?" John said from behind Dean. "He's been really wanting a hamburger."_

"_Oh sure baby," the woman said with a wave of her hand. She bent down and disappeared underneath the counter and when she reemerged she had a circular object wrapped in aluminum foil. "Just cooked'em fresh this morning." She handed Dean the hot foiled package over the top of the counter._

_Dean took it from her as well as a clear plastic cup for soda with a quiet 'thank you' and placed them on the tray. John grabbed a salad of iceberg lettuce, raisins, and carrots wrapped in a paper plate as well and a serving of oval cut Salisbury steak, pushing the tray to the cashier who sat poised at her ancient looking register at the end of the line._

_John paid for the food and after Dean filled his cup with Tab (they didn't have Dr. Pepper or Coke) he and his dad looked for a place to sit. There was a vacant square table beside a group of medical students in their pristine white jackets, pouring over thick text books in silence and one by a group of nurses who were laughing over gross stories about their patients._

_John chose the table by the nurses because it was loud enough to not be overheard and close enough to the general population of the cafeteria that they wouldn't look out of place._

_Dean sat down across from his dad. He unwrapped the foil from his burger and took a big bite. It was made up of mostly two thick buns and a slivered patty with a few pickles and a flat piece of lettuce. He chewed and wiped some mustard off of his chin with the napkin that came with his silverware, all the while avoiding his father's gaze._

_John only stabbed at the lettuce and raisins of his salad so he wasn't avoiding looking at Dean the entire time Dean was avoiding looking at him._

_Dean felt every second of his dad's gaze burn through his bent head as he tried to fake an enjoyment of the poor excuse for a burger that he was eating. Finally though, the consequences of wolfing down an entire hamburger and a cup of soda in under five minutes left him with nothing else to do but finally look up to his father._

_John had pushed aside the salad and was staring across the small square table at Dean. His old leather jacket had a few more burn singe marks on it than when he had left Dean with Sam, and he had a new scar started just under where the beard started to meet his face and ran up to his right cheek bone. He wore all the signs of a Hunter returning from a Job._

"_Dad-"_

"_Save it Dean," John's whisky induced husky voice cut Dean off. He leant over with a thick squeak of the chair's legs on the tile. "What's done is done – any excuse you give isn't going to change that." John seemed to deflate just a hair and a peaking of the father he used to be towards Dean before the Hunter's Obsession had overtaken him came through his weather worn face. "I know you think I'm being hard on you, but goddamnit," John lowered his voice when the hospital Chaplin walked by with an important looking man in an expensive gray business suit. He waited until both passed in a din of a conversation before he addressed Dean again. "If something were to happen to you boys that brought the State down on us- they'd separate us in a heartbeat Dean. You and Sam, you'd be in a Boy's Home faster than you can blink, is that what you want?"_

"_No Sir," Dean said._

"_I didn't think you did," John returned. "You're old enough to understand now Dean that your actions have consequences, both for you _and_ for Sam. Now I know you care very much for your brother, so I want you to stop with these stupid kid screw ups."_

_The word 'stupid' stung Dean harder than he would admit. His dad wasn't a perfect man, or even an _easy _man. But deep down Dean knew that he loved him and Sam. It was the real kind of love, not the fake stuff people who ignore or beat their kids know. And that's why the names hurt more._

"_I will dad," Dean met his father square in the eye, balling up a napkin like a snowball to stop his hands from shaking. "I promise."_

**xxxxXxxxx**

**2014**

Dean's eyes darted around for the shadow that he knew he saw. He waited until a count of three before stepping back into the fish tank looking room of the Critical Care Unit. A hiss of hydraulics came from the door opening into a tiny little room the width of only ten linoleum floor tiles. The room was an isolation room, and the small anteroom was equipped with red biohazard bins, yellow isolation gowns and ventilator masks. Dean walked past the piles of gowns and masks without donning a single one before entering the small glass room next to it.

A quiet hum of the Negative Pressure ventilation system was drown out by the beeps over the over 5 machines hooked up to Sam. A heart monitor beeped steadily, but fast paced, and through it all Sam didn't move as Dean stood over him, hand going to the pulse point on his brother's wrist, not trusting the monitors. Sam's wrist was slick with sweat and his heartbeat thudded a staccato rhythm under Dean's fingers. It was proof of life, but it only brought Dean small comfort because he had no idea what the hell they were dealing with.

Dean tore his eyes away from Sam and peeked through the white curtain that hung over the glass walls of the room. He glanced back out into the hallway visible through the clear glass, watching the scant amount of nurses walk by in scrubs the color of red wine. The nurses' mouths moved in a pantomime fashion, voices stolen by the insulation of the door.

The hallway was brightly lit, illuminating all of the faces of the nurses bustling and moving around the hallway and the nurses' station.

But none of them had the burnt brown hair color that Dean saw, the same color he'd last seen soaked slick in rain before it morphed into the jet black fur all over the body of a massive dog that dangled his brother over the city like he was meat. Which meant that the next time Dean saw her face, whatever kind of hair she wore, dog or human, it was going to bleed bright red.

He turned back around to Sam. "What is it with you and hospitals in Florida Sammy?" Dean watched Sam's still figure, the rise and fall of his chest that was forced into calmness by the drugs running through his system. "You didn't need to one up yourself man." Dean answered his own question almost angrily, but his voice bore more weary sadness than actual anger. He swiped a hand down his face like he was trying to rub that weariness away.

The hydraulics of the sliding door opened with a 'whoosh' of air. Dean turned, moving directly in front of Sam as a figure emerged from the gray light. A dark shadow danced over the top of the white curtain, and the shadow of a hand slid gripped to the other side of the curtain.

Dean reached into his coat, pulling out the iron knife and tucking it into his hand so that he blade was out, but concealed in his palm. He reached out and grasped the curtain in his hand, pulling it a fast slide.

The fabric parted like a stage scene and the door to the anteroom opened at the same moment.

A nurse from the hallway stood there; she held up her hands, startled at seeing Dean so close to her, dropping the metal clipboard she was holding with a thick clang.

Dean used the distraction to return his blade into the folds of his jacket before he bent down with a "sorry," retrieving what he caused the woman to drop.

"Don't worry about it," the nurse said as Dean handed her the papers and her clipboard in one scooped movement. "You've probably had a long day."

"Yeah, that's an understatement," Dean said in a voice that rolled like gravel and sounded like crap from all the yelling he'd been doing.

The nurse stood back up after sealing all her paperwork back into her clipboard with a click. She removed something from the pocket of her scrubs and pulled a yellow mask on her face with a snap of elastic, then donned a pair of latex gloves and moved over to the other side of Sam's bed.

Her eyes moved over to the monitors, writing the numbers down on the paper she clipped to the clipboard, before abandoning it to the chair Dean had been sitting at. She then leant over Sam's injured arm, gloved hands peeking under the thick bandages that circled metal halo device soldered to the outside of his skin.

"How's he doing?" While the nurse's eyes moved over Sam, Dean's eyes moved over her, watching her check the places where the metal was screwed into Sam's arm. There were two circular metal rings fused into Sam's skin by long metal screws. The nurse removed a thin purple headed screw driver from a sealed bag and placed it in one of the screw tip rods and turned it twice, not answering Dean's question.

The metal creaked a tinny sound that scratched across Dean's brain. "What are you doing?"

"These pins are holding the bone together from the inside out," she removed the screwdriver and continued her maneuver on the other pins. "They need to be turned every four hours to in order to reset the damage."

"I thought the doc already did that," Dean all but backed at the woman.

"She did as much as she could," The nurse reached over Sam's arm and screwed the screws on the other side. "But the break in your brother's arm was extensive, it wasn't something that could be fixed in one surgery." She lowered her screwdriver, moving her hand over Sam's lax fingers in hers, squeezing the systematically. The look of calculation in her eyes deepened into a frown.

Dean immediately noticed. "What's wrong?"

The nurse shook her head as she continued to squeeze each of Sam's fingers in turn. "His fingers are a little dusky."

"_Dusky?" _

"They're pale," The nurse clarified, releasing Sam's fingers "Blue tinged." She turned Sam's hand up enough that Dean saw the blue black tint that encircled the tips of Sam's fingers.

When Dean was 23, he and his dad had had lived for two weeks in a cabin on the Bearpaw Mountains of Montana to hunt a Rugaru and had gotten lost in a blizzard. They had forced to spend the night in subzero temperatures and it had nearly cost Dean his three fingers on his right hand.

"It's a sign of poor circulation," The nurse turned and checked the bag of yellow antibiotics hanging half full by Sam's bed. She hit a button on the infusion pump before opening the plastic door and removing the tubing from its housing and opening the roller clamp wide. "If it doesn't slow down, the tissue will start to necrotize."

"Wait, are you telling me that even after all that surgery and iron works, there's a chance that he could _still lose _the arm?" Dean's voice was as still as a winter night at the prospect pf what such a thing could mean for Sam.

"No one's saying that," the nurse responded, though she didn't sound convincing, not even to herself. She watched the quick paced drips of the yellow liquid into the drip chamber. "I just upped the rate of his antibiotics."

"Will it reverse this?" Dean's voice was barely asking.

"It needs a chance to work," Her words hung on the hinge of a 'but' that was clearly written all over her face as she stared down at Sam's pale, sweat soaked face. She reached over and grabbed the phone that sat at an unpainted bedside table. "I'm paging Dr. Gillespie."

A rattling gasp came from Sam, and he jerked upward the bed like it had electrocuted him.

The noise instantly snapped Dean's attention to his brother. "Sam?"

"_Sir?"_ The nurse hung up the phone. She grabbed a penlight out of her pocket and peeled one of Sam's eyes back to check his pupils, but the moment her fingers grasped the corners of Sam's right eye, they shot open.

But as soon as they did Dean saw that something was very wrong with them. The hazel color was faded like someone had mixed them in a concoction of milk, and the whites of his eyes were webbed over so thickly in visible capillaries that they were bright red.

Sam's head moved to the sound of the noise the nurse made shuffling around by his bed, and jerked back like something had shocked him when she reached her gloved fingers up to his eyes again. His uninjured arm banged into the table that was pulled up right next to the bed.

"Sammy- hey, hey, hey!-" Dean grabbed Sam's shoulder before he could inflict more damage on himself. "–easy!"

"Mr. Wesson," The nurse moved in front of Sam. "You're in the hospital; do you remember what happened?"

Sam's turned to the sound of the nurse's voice, but he didn't answer her.

"Dean?" His voice sounded seeking.

"It's me Sam," Dean reached out a hand to Sam's shoulder. "But you gotta relax man okay?"

Sam turned his head to the touch, but then moved his head spastically around the room, taking one long exaggerated blink like he'd gotten water in his eyes. "Dean, I can't see anything."

Dean's heartbeat amplified and exploded when Sam's words reached him only inches away from where he stood in Sam's direct line of sight.

The nurse snatched up her penlight and immediately grabbed Sam's right eye before he could jerk back and shined her light in it.

The bright light reached Sam's pupil like he'd been gouged in the face. He made almost a baying noise and jerked back smashing up against the oxygen connections behind his head.

"Sammy-!" Dean reached around and jerked his other hand on Sam's other shoulder. "Hey, calm down, talk to me-"

Sam reached out a groping hand like he was feeling his way through a cave at midnight. "Everything-," Sam dug the palm of his free hand across both his eyes, blinking furiously as his red eyes began to water. "Everything's distorted, and gray," He felt the cool air on his pupils so he knew that his eyes were open, but it was like someone had turned off all the lights except one single bulb buried under a thick blanket. The world was distorted around the edges like an aura when he had a migraine headache.

"_Sammy!_"

The nurse stared at Sam and ran out the automatic doors, standing halfway in and halfway out of the anteroom calling out to the nearest nursing station. "Bring the crash cart, and Get Dr. Gillespie in her _STAT_!" She raced out of the room and towards a flurry of nurses who wheeled what looked like a metal toolbox on wheels towards them, rattling the defibulator on top.

Sam couldn't see anything distinct but he had heard the rise in the way Dean had said his name. He pulled his hand away from his face, feeling something that felt _warm_ on the skin of his palm.

Dean watched as the heel of Sam's palm came back bright red, coated in a thick layer of blood that had leaked out of his eyes.

"_What is it?"_ Sam had no chance to analyze the look he felt Dean giving him or the feeling of warmth on his hands before his head erupted in pain that felt like someone was trying to jam a thicket of nettles out through his eye sockets.

"Tilt your head up," Dean pushed his hand on Sam's head and tipped it back, blood overflowing and spilling out of his eyes like tears.

"Dean, _what?" _Sam felt the warmth slide down his cheekbones and this time his senses caught up with the rest of him to tell him that it was blood. His heart rate sped up and the blood began to free flow faster down his face, and he felt whatever poison was in his system work its way through his body like someone was scraping his insides with barbed wire.

"We'll fix it Sammy, alright?" Dean tore open a pack of gauze a nurse from a previous shift had left on the bedside table. He wiped at the blood that dripped down Sam's eyes. "Just stay with me man-"

Sam felt a cringe of pain so bad it made him spasm. "The Lapelas-" Sam made a noise of pain when the gauze touched his eyes. "Dean she did this!"

"I'll find her," Dean's voice was thick with ferocity, he held the gauze over Sam's eyes like double eye patches, blotches of red pooled onto them in seconds. "And gut her throat out."

The automatic doors opened with a whoosh and a noisy clatter of the crash cart rolled along the floor being pulled by first nurse and a red headed nurse in black scrubs. Their hands moved in a flurry of activity: opening drawers and pulling out small vials of clear and opaque colored liquid.

The first nurse plunged a needle down to the syringe withdrawing the solution inside. "Dr. Gillespie should've been here by now!" She grabbed the Y port on the IV and stuck the needle inside of it.

"What is that?" Dean demanded, keeping his hand over the blood soaked gauze over Sam's eyes.

"A sedative," the nurse returned in a hurried manner giving no more information as she flicked a tiny air bubble out of the syringe with a jerk of her finger. "We need to take him back to the OR for exploratory, he might have burst a major artery-"

"No," Sam's voice was more panting than sound. He was unable to see anything now but a haze of gray with red and orange tinged edges like he was looking at the world through a broken kaleidoscope. His insides felt like molten lava was being poured "Stop!-"

"There's a chance you might be bleeding internally," the nurse said to Sam, her voice calming, but not pandering. "We need to get you back into surgery and check out everything." She started to draw down the plunger down on the needle in her hand, filled with 10 millimeters of lorazepam. "This is going to help take the edge off."

She cried out a second later when Sam's uninjured hand reached out and grabbed her wrist in a crushing hold, nearly causing her to stab herself in the hand with the needle as it clattered to the floor.

"_I said STOP!"_

"Hey, Sammy, _Sam!_ Calm down!" Dean released one of the gauze over Sam's eyes. He grabbed Sam's arm and pinned it down to the bed. "Easy, it's okay!"

"The pain's making him delirious," The nurse grabbed her wrist, trying to hide from the pain from the force Sam had exerted, but the wince escaped her anyway.

The second nurse reached into the opened drawer of the crash cart kit and pulled out a prefilled syringe handing it off to her colleague.

"Hold him down," The first nurse uncapped the needle in her teeth and stuck it into his IV while the second nurse pulled all of her weight into Sam's uninjured side to keep him still. The needle pushed 0.1 ml of the drug into Sam's IV.

"Dean!" Sam's clouded vision shifted over to the last place he'd heard his brother, now a shadowed thickness in front of him. "Don't! The Lapelas-"

"Look at me man-!" Dean knew that Sam's vision was shot to crap, but even half blind Dean knew Sam would see his expression in his voice. "I said I got it."

"No," Sam grunted in agony as Dean pressed both hands over the gauze against his eyes. "You're not going after her alone!-"

The gauze were now completely saturated in blood and the calloused touch of Dean's skin permeated through Sam's near sightless eyes.

A scream ripped apart the air like a knife across a sheet of canvas. The nurse jumped a second time, her movement with the needle stilled in her hand. Her college walked around to the door, drawing back the curtain. The ante room was dimly lit with floodlights, when seconds ago it had been fully lit from halogen bulbs in the celling. The nurse's face contorted in confusion and she hit the red emergency release button by the door that drew both sides of it outward like a barn door.

Dean stood up and once again moved in front of Sam, drawing his iron blade out completely, but not moving even a millimeter away from his bed, covering Sam's weak side, which at this moment was every part of him.

"Dr. Gillespie?" The nurse stepped into the anteroom, and her sneakers crunched on thick plastic from spilled Personal Protective Equipment. Boxes were thrown haphazardly onto the ground, tipping their contents out like viscera onto the tiled floor. She picked up a red Sharps box, carefully avoiding the used needles, her heart rate tripling at the sight of the mess. Her eyes raised to the nurses station, and she saw it abandoned when moments ago it hadn't been.

She stepped out into the hallway. The lights were on, the computer monitors whirred, cups of coffee and cans of soda stood half full around the computers like everyone had left and taken a break all at once.

She walked down the short hallway to the second nurses' station a few yards around the corner. It was quiet too, but she saw her colleague April sitting in her computer chair. Her head was drooped down to her chest, eyes closed, and her arms were lax at her side.

"April?-" the nurse said didn't believe her eyes when she saw her 15-year veteran colleague _asleep _at her desk. "April, what the hell are you doing?-" she placed her hand on April's shoulder to shake her, but then something sticky clung to her fingers. When she pulled her hand back her palm was soaked crimson. A thick drying stain ran down from April's neck to the floor like a waterfall. Her movement had caused April's long brown hair to be pushed off her neck, revealing the tail end of a long gash that gleamed skull bone through and gray matter through it.

"Oh God!" The nurse backed away with a horrified scream, sending the chair sliding backwards with April in it. Blood leaking thickly to the floor.

"_Nope." _

A voice that wasn't the nurses popped the words like bubble gum. She jerked and spun around.

A woman in green scrubs with dark, dark hair woven into a pile on her head stood right behind her. "Try an older religion." The woman blinked, and her eyes changed color, glowing like they were on fire.

The nurse stood frozen in shock and watched as the woman pulled something out from the front pocket of her scrub top. Her fingers were clutched around a black Motorola pager. "Doctor Gillespie lost her pager I'm afraid," She crushed the pager in one hand, plastic powered remnant's falling to the ground like sand. "And your other colleagues went to answer a code blue in another room where all the mechanical locks _mysteriously _stopped working- Isn't it a _bitch_ when everything goes wrong all at once?"

The nurse backed up, her eyes wide in fear, her sneakers tripping and squeaking on the tile.

The woman's sneakers crunched over the plastic powder at her feet. "You know, I was _trying_ to go incognito, use the abilities to shift human that the gods granted me so I wouldn't make a scene, cause panic, things that would just _delay_ what I came here for. But then you had to troop over here like the Do Gooder on Crack that you are, and _ruin_ my whole cover_. _So I thought: _what the hell?"_ The woman threw up her hands, letting them fall with a slap to her legs. "No more secrets." She blinked and her eyes grew even more molten, the color of the hottest part of an iron works forge. "That Hunter in there," she pointed back to the isolation room. "He's _my_ prey sweetheart, best thing I've tracked in centuries. And I'm not about to let a little nothing like you that get in the way of what I want." Her footsteps grew louder and heavier, crushing the tile underneath her like it was made of paper. Her coral painted lips pulled back revealing rows of sharp canine teeth, her body dropped downward, scrubs vaporizing off of her, being replaced with hackled raised black fur and a growling maw.

The nurse froze in her movements and let out a massive scream as the giant black dog lunged at her. She scrambled backwards and turned around into a full run, but she was flung hard to the ground

The nurse ripped turned over and screamed as the Lapelas pinned her down, and lunged up her body with snapping razor sharp fangs.

The sound of a gunshot echoed in the hallway and the black dog mass was thrown sideways off of her. The Lapelas shook itself out if a daze, and raised her head to the sight of Dean standing in the doorway of the isolation room, gun drawn, the muzzle of it smoking.

"Run!" Dean yelled at the nurse.

The nurse crab walked backwards then clamored to her feet and took off in a sprint down the hallway.

The Lalepas' muzzle contorted into a full bared growl. She barked a thundering echo at Dean, pools of Wolfspane smelling saliva dripping off of her maw, poisonous flowers erupting from the cracked tile each place it dripped.

Dean took aim again and hit her in the knee joint of her right front leg; she yowled and fell forward, but didn't lose her footing. Her copper eyes narrowed into angry slits and she broke into a trot, heading right towards the isolation room.

Dean backed through the automatic doors, and ran to the bed, yanking off the thin hospital grade covers off of Sam's legs, "We gotta go-c'mon!" he yanked the IV needle out of Sam's arm leaving a bleeding trail down his skin. He pulled Sam up by his good arm and draped it across his shoulder.

Sam bore his weight on his bare feet in a lopsided slide, dizzy and nauseous, his traction brace was clunky and heavy and radiated in near white hot pain at the movement. But, Dean righted him, bearing both their weights.

Dean pulled and Sam followed him along, almost completely blind, but listening to the cadence of Dean's heavy boots and the blow of his breath by his ear and was able to match his stride to his brother's, moving with him to the first set of double doors, hearing the whoosh as they opened.

The growling outside grew louder, permeating _through _the thick glass of the isolation anteroom. The copper eyes of the Lapelas stared at Dean in an ancient hatred.

"Go, _go!_" Dean pulled Sam through the anteroom. The last remaining door between them and the ancient dog pulled open and the massive paws banged on the tile, splitting and cracking it, sprouting vines of poisonous plants, Her eyes gleamed a murderous copper that wanted to rip and shred, honed fully on Sam.

Dean stopped, pulling Sam back before he could take another step. Both of them stood in the opened doorway, only a foot away from hackled raised fur and bared teeth.

Dean set his hand higher up on Sam's shoulder fingers moving hard through the bones of the back of Sam's shoulder blade, hard enough to make Sam wince audibly. He stared down the ancient dog. "You want him?"

Sam heard the rapid breaths come out of Dean, felt the equally rapid rise and fall of his chest, the smell of Hemlock wafting up nauseatingly at him.

Dean held the handle of the iron blade tight in the hand that was bracing Sam upright, but it was his gun that he raised squarely at the Lapelas' snarling face. "Not a chance in hell you mongrel piece of shit."

Her growl became as loud as an earthquake in the hallway, she bared her full set of teeth and barked a sound that sounded like a death omen. Her haunches released from their spring loaded position and she leapt into the anteroom.

Sam dropped hard on his good shoulder and came a left handed roll, following the tactical hand signal move Dean had tapped out on his back. He landed in a hard slide of arms and legs just outside the isolation room, the metal of his halo traction device wailing awfully against the tile and hammering pain through his arm and down his entire right side. He didn't hear any other noise except his own gasps for breath and the howling growl of the Lapelas.

The Laepelas leapt with such range that she cleared the anteroom and crashed into the isolation room itself, smashing the IV pole into the empty hospital bed, the linens shredding under her coal black claws. She shook herself off in a quick recovery and spun back around, claws scraping the tile. Her eyes narrowed, and her mouth opened into a snarl and she sprang back around into a full speed run.

Dean aimed the gun up just before she reached the doors, shooting out the red eyes of the sensors above the doorway, the door slammed shut right into the body of the Laepelas as she ran headfirst into a skittered thud with such force that her head crashed through the Plexiglas, leaving her stuck in there like she was caught in a guillotine, black blood leaking off the fur on her neck. She snapped and barked and tried to back out as Dean shot the second door sensors, then the light bulbs recessed in the ceiling directly over the room as the Laepelas continued to try and claw backwards out of the Plexiglas.

Sam's vision was now faded almost into total blackness in the absence of any form of actual light. He heard the sound of Dean's shoes before they reached him, and followed the pull of Dean's heft as he was lifted to his feet, and ran blindly with his brother down the hallway.


	7. Chapter 7

**xxxxxXxxxx**

"_You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one. "_

~James A. Froude

**xxxxXxxxxx**

**_1987_**

_The hallways were almost gray like the old black and white horror movies that Dean would find late at night on television to watch after when Sam was supposed to be asleep._

_Nurses wandered down the halls, one or two of them stopping to glance over their shoulders, not trusting their eyes to what their ears had just heard. But each of the nurses' cursory glances revealed nothing but an empty hallway, so each of them chalked it up to one too many night shifts and walked ion to continue their rounds. _

_John moved like he was set on mute, not a single sound came from his heavy work boots, even his breath was silent as Dean followed him in the gray light, trying to match his quietness. But his dad was a seasoned Hunter, and Dean was a kid with second hand sneakers that squeaked with a flap of torn canvas as he turned the corner. Down the opposite side of the hallway, another lone nurse was pushing a medication cart with a squeaky wheel away from them._

_But the squeak that Dean's shoes made was louder than the squeaky wheel and the cart and the nurse stopped and she turned around._

_Before she could turn around fully, a large hand grabbed Dean by the shoulder and shoved him backwards against the wall. The smell of gun grease and the old leather of his dad's jacket shoved its way up his nose as his dad braced a long arm across Dean's chest, pinning him against the plaster._

_John peered out from behind the corner, ducking again just a moment later when the nurse cocked her head his way like she had caught sight of him. He uttered a silent swear and turned down to look at Dean in a no nonsense look to not make a sound._

_Dean nodded, the tip of his chin brushing the leather of his dad's jacket sleeve, feeling his heart beat ratcheting against his ribcage. His dad released his arm, but his look didn't die down. _

_Dean bent down and very, very slowly slid out of his old sneakers, holding them up by their dirty white laces to his dad. In reality he had no plan for the shoes, but at least they wouldn't squeak and give them away again. _

_John snatched up his sneakers so fast that the laces burned Dean's fingertips; peered out the corner again and threw the shoes into a shadowed opened room. This time the nurse jumped nearly foot in the air and abandoned the cart to run into the room in search for the noise._

_John grabbed Dean by the arm and yanked him to the left side of the hallway, not passing a single nurse or orderly as he ran and Dean followed. Dean's socked feet were now the only silence left between them._

_They reached the opened door bay with the stripped curtains and John pulled back the curtains back. _

_Sammy was lying on the bed, half of his face was pushed into the pillow, and his hair was damp._

_Dean approached the bed and shook his brother's shoulder and whispered his name. "Sammy? Sammy-" He squeezed Sam's smaller hand hard._

_Sam's eyes blinked in the mass of blankets and the clown hospital gown that he was wearing. "Dean?" _

_Despite how tense the situation was Dean couldn't help the smile that crept to his face at the way Sam said his name. "Hey Sammy, dad's here, and we're going to take you to Uncle Bobby's."_

_Sam looked up, muddled and sleepy at the mention of their father and creaked his head around to stare in wide eyed sleepiness at John. "Dad?"_

"_Ready to get out of here kid?" John asked this as he swept the covers off the bed and picked up Sam cast and all._

_Sam stared up at his father's scruffy dark beard. "My clothes-"_

"_We'll get you more clothes Sam," John said quickly to his youngest son while glancing at his older one. "Let's go Dean before anyone sees us."_

"_Whatcha talkin about dad?" Sam's confusion was a syrupy, just-woken-up voice of a 5-year-old._

"_Dad'll tell you when we get to Uncle Bobby's," Dean returned. "Right now you gotta keep quiet cause people are trying to sleep in here."_

_Sam looked up at Dean with heavy lidded eyes, like the drugs had stolen any retort to what Dean had just said and replaced them with sleepiness. _

_Sam clung with his one arm around his father, plucking at the clowns on his hospital gown like they would come alive at any minute at eat him for not staying in the hospital room._

_His dad carried him out of the room and he heard Dean walking quickly beside him._

_The hallway was gray and Sam felt so sleepy, like that time he had taken a nap in the car in Texas and had woken up in Nevada and didn't remember anything in between. His shoes and socks were still in the bag with his Batman cape and shirt. He didn't ever want to see the Batman cape again, but he really _liked _his shoes and his feet felt like cold popsicles without his socks on._

_Sam looked over at Dean from the leather mountain made by his dad's shoulder. "Dean-" he tried to whisper in a loud voice which made him sound like a voice of tearing cardboard. "Dean!"_

"_Shh!" Dean whispered back, standing on his tip toes to clamp a hand over Sam's mouth just as a shadow a darker shade of gray than the gray all around move towards them with loud steps. _

_John stopped walking and backed up against a closet, watching the same nurse they had lost earlier walk with a purposeful stride with her cart full of medications like she had finally spotted them._

"_Who's there?" Her voice permeated through all the gray and their whispered voices like a light through a fog._

_Dean felt his heart trying to run full speed out of his ribcage and onto the floor. His arm was extended with his hand still high up on Sam's mouth and he felt Sam's warm puffs of breath blow in between his fingers._

_John stooped in a half crouch and set Sam down on the tile, pushing Sam's good arm up over Dean's shoulders. _

"_I parked on the second level," John spoke in a hurried, low whisper._

"_I said _who's _there?!"_ _the nurse's voice was shrill like an admiral to a pirate who dared board her ship. _

"_Take the elevator," John's whisper became even more hurried to Dean "Get Sam down to the car, I'll meet you there, understand?"_

_Dean had heard this sentence in some variation throughout his entire nine years of life, and had never questioned it because he didn't know any different. He nodded at his father, and took on Sam's lighter weight, shoving the keys quickly in the pocket of his jeans. He Sam's arm up over his shoulder and began to move down the hallway to where he remembered the elevators were from when they came up. His hand was still over Sam's mouth, and the drugs must have been wearing off because Sam was trying to remove Dean's hand off of his mouth._

_John turned and stood up, blocking his sons' awkward clunk down the hallway. This time, his mud caked hiking boots resonated with a thick squelching sound as he approached the nurse._

_She startled at the sight of John with a startled hand to her chest._

"_I'm sorry ma'am," John's voice waved into politeness, loud enough to cover the scuffling of two boys._

"_What are you doing up here?" The nurse spoke like she was demanding his head. "Visiting hours are over-"_

"_Yes ma'am, I know that," John took a slower step towards her like he was being cautious so as to not spook a horse. "My wife just had a baby upstairs, and I came down here to get a cup of coffee because the machine up there is broken – I'm sorry for scaring you."_

_The nurse sense of prickliness seemed to deflate some at John's words, though she still looked at him like he was half crazy. "The coffee machine's back that way," she pointed to the hallway that junctioned to the left of her. _

"_Thank you," John said back in a manner of politeness that the nurse dialed her suspicion back one notch. He offered her a smile from underneath the growth of his bead and turned to walk down the left hallway in a slow, deliberate manner, feeling her hard glare on him. He kept walking until he heard her cart move back down the hallway she had been at, the noise growing quieter._

_Dean managed to drag Sam along to the elevators at the farthest end of the hallway, sweat dripping off the back of his neck from having to carry not only his weight, but Sam's._

_He released the hand over Sam's mouth with a hand to his lips to pantomime Sam into silence._

"_De-" Sam's voice was tired, exhausted air as Dean leant him up against the elevator door and jammed the down arrow with his thumb, lighting it up a glowing red._

"_Shhh!" Dean whispered back. "People are sleepin' Sammy remember? You gotta be quiet."_

"_Why was daddy talkin' to that lady?" Sam whispered back, oblivious to the warning._

"_He was signing the papers we need to take you home," Dean lied quickly, watching the numbers above the elevator doors light up as they descended to the floor they were on, silently cursing it to hurry up. "He's gonna meet us at the Impala, okay?"_

_The elevator finally dinged on their floor. Dean held his breath as the doors opened, trying to hurridly think of a plan should someone be behind them._

_The doors slid open all the way to an empty car, and Dean blew out a relieved breath. "C'mon Sammy," he grabbed his brother back up from the wall, pulling his uncasted arm around his shoulders. "It's gonna be okay." _

_Dean moved and pushed until Sam was on the elevator, hitting the button labeled: 'PG' for parking garage just as he saw a shadow move just to the right of him and he heard a whistled tune break the silence._

_The doors stayed open on a delay to allow any gurneys or wheelchairs onto the car. Dean smashed the door closed button with his finger, whispering a: "c'mon!" as he heard the whistling down the hallway grow louder. Finally the doors began to close, slowly, slowly, just as the whistling reached it's loudest pitch._

_The car moved down at the same rate Dean's stomach dropped, he breathed out in relief and stared over at Sam. "We're almost home Sam."_

**xxxxxXxxxx**

**2014**

"Sir!-"

The voice called behind Dean over the rolling sound of the wheelchair on the linoleum. The voice called out to him again when Dean didn't stop the momentum of the chair he was pushing.

"Where are you going?" the nurse in pink scrubs had to jog to catch up to Dean who was clearing the hallway in much faster strides than her.

Even when she caught up with him Dean didn't slow down, but he could hear it in her voice that a third time of him not answering her would not be accepted.

"Cafeteria." Dean's voice casual, like it was a regularly accepted answer to this type of question.

The nurse's face drew back in a kind of shocked surprise. She stared down at the man in the wheelchair, extremely tall, in only a blue hospital gown, face drawn and pale half bent into his lap, feet bare, with a traction halo screwed into his right arm. And she didn't believe one damn word of it. "Who's your doctor? He doesn't even look like he's clear to be out of bed!-"

"Well take it up with the Doc," Dean said snappishly, like she was new at her job. "All my brother wants here is a cup of real coffee-"

The noise of Sam's breath was loud against his ears like a hurricane, and every other noise was amplified in the same capacity, the sounds of the wheels on the chair, even his own heartbeat all throbbed and threatened to tear his hearing apart.

"He may not even be able to _have_ coffee!" the nurse hissed this at Dean in a reprimand, trying to move ahead of him to block his path.

But Dean had been trained how to outmaneuver before this woman ever considered it as an option. He pushed the wheelchair on; but the hallway they were on ended five feet in front to a solid wall and blocked their path without any intervention from the nurse.

"Sir!"

Dean stopped, and held his position, turning to flash the nurse a look over his shoulder, arms locked on the handles of the chair, hearing Sam's breath go from slow and loud, to stopping, like a hairline trigger, waiting.

The nurse moved on the right side of the wheelchair and got right up to Dean, staring up at the distance between her 5'5 height and his 6'1 height. "You need to tell me who your brother's doctor is, _now!_ He could reinjure himself being out of bed this soon!-"

"She was blonde and leggy," Dean returned in a slow drawn out stall. "Other than that I don't remember."

The nurse's expression grew even more deadly – but before she could act, the hospital's PA system cut into the air bearing a woman's voice:

"_Attention West Wing Staff, Code Blue, P653._"

The nurse's expression shifted in a look that said that the unit the announcement was talking about was hers.

"_Attention West Wing Staff, Code Blue P653."_

The message repeated itself, and the nurse gave Dean a look that remained hostile as she turned and hurried quickly down hallway to answer the code.

Dean waited until the sounds of the nurses' sneakers became loud and fading and quickly backed up the wheel chair to a wooden door that was built with a ventilation system below it, signaling that it wasn't a patient room.

Dean opened the door and ducked into a closet that appeared to be a catch all for hospital supplies: the space was lined ten sets of metal shelves deep, which were stacked with clean hospital gowns, extra doctor's scrubs and rows upon rows of medical equipment and supplies on the shelves and in open boxes stacked at the base of all of them.

Dean reached behind and pressed a flat switch on the wall, illuminating the room in florescent light.

"Dean-"

With all of the shelving and boxes there was barely enough clearance for the wheelchair and Dean, he had to push himself around a shelf lined in bottles of hydrogen peroxide to get in front of Sam.

The whites Sam's eyes were now almost completely blood red, pupils so pale the color was all but blotted out, but he still flinched like the small bit of light overhead bothered his eyes.

Dean reached around Sam's back and loosened the straps of the hospital gown until they came away revealing dried blood and a molten of bruises across Sam's bare chest and abdomen, working their way down his bare legs not covered up by gray boxer shorts. The flesh of Sam's right arm not taken up by the traction device was spider webbed with black looking veins that seemed to move with each painful sounding breath Sam took.

Sam didn't have time to comprehend the gesture before he heard two quick ripping noises that sounded like fabric being torn apart, "Dean, what are you doing?-"

Dean was now without a shirt, having shed his jacket, flannel shirt and gray t-shirt. He had ripped off the left sleeves of the latter two and quickly pulled the t-shirt over Sam's head, then the flannel, working the empty holes through the traction halo on Sam's arm as fast as he dared without risking pulling the thing apart. He then backed up and pulled off his boots one at a time.

The noise turned Sam's head even further towards its source, not being able to see had acutely raised his other senses to compensate for the missing one. But whatever poison the Lapelas had coursed through his system blew it up 700 percent, making the noises and sensations around him excruciating. He bit back the growling groan that tried to escape to try and keep his voice from traveling further that what he suspected was a closet, not wanting to give them away.

"Hold on okay-," Dean said in front of him. "Consider yourself lucky that you're blind for this part man-"

Sam felt Dean moving something up his legs that radiated a warmth. "Dean-"

"I got this Sammy," Dean's voice was an assurance and half a joke for Sam's sake; something came out even when the situation was deadly tense because that's how Dean would operate to diffuse anything when it came to his brother. "Gotta say this is harder to do than that time you were in that cast after the Batman/Superman combo incident."

Sam blinked his sightless eyes in memory of a hospital hallway in Florida, of Dean yanking off his shirt and jeans to give them to Sam so he wouldn't look like a kid escaping from the hospital, even as they were escaping from the hospital.

The fabric that Sam felt on his legs broke into the memory, and the smell that Sam could only describe as 'Dean' came over him as something made of canvas plopped in his lap, and the Hunter and the Brother that Sam was broke wide with a realization.

"Dean I told you you're not doing this alone!-"

"She's part dog Sam, I'm guessing that's true in the scent part too," Dean threw Sam's bloodied hospital gown over his own body, then looted around until he found a pair of celadon green scrub pants that looked large enough to fit him and threw them on, then a top of the same color tucking in the bloodied ends of Sam's gown into the waist of the pants. The scrubs were too light to conceal a gun so he would just have to keep it drawn down. "If I'm not back in 10 minutes, you roll your ass to the ambulance bay on the ground level," he pressed the Impala keys in Sam's hands. "-the car should still be out there."

"Dean, she's after me, not you-!" Sam barked in a voice as loud as he dared, but one that still echoed in the still room that smelled like cleaning products.

"Exactly," Dean barked back, his voice the same level as Sam's "she's after _you_-!"

"Then let her find me," Sam's breath competed for noise level with his voice. "I can lure her out, let her come to me-"

"You're not a lure right now Sam, you're _meat!"_ Dean snapped back in vicious anger directed at what Sam was suggesting. "That ain't a fair fight!"

"Neither is what you're doing!" Sam's anger was just as vicious at what Dean was about to do. "You need me!"

"Use this to get out-" Dean grabbed Sam's wrist and turned his hand up, the Impala keys spilled into Sam's lap and Sam felt the wooden hilt of the iron knife replace it. "Your blade should be stashed in with your clothes back in your hospital room, and I smell enough like you to draw that bitch to me so I can use it when I get to it."

"Dean, don't do this!-"

"Somebody's gotta fly into this fight Sam, and everybody knows that Batman can't fly." Dean's released Sam's wrist and moved past him with a light tread of boots that Sam heard like a heavy, rattling, booming echo.

"_Dean!"_ Sam hissed one more time before Dean moved past him; the supply room door shut hard and the room fell silent again.

Sam threw Dean's jacket to the ground and fumbled for the sides of the wheelchair that he was sitting in, setting the knife in his lap with the keys. His hands reached outward and he felt the outer edges of the shelves within a single arms span, meaning that the closet was too small for a wheelchair to even be _inside_ let alone turn around. Sam dropped his feet to the ground and used them as leverage, pushing backwards on the right wheel with his good arm, he kept up this momentum until the back of the chair wheels hit the door with a bang, sending a pain up and down his body. He craned his arm up and reached backwards for the door handle, turning it at that awkward position.

But the handle didn't yield, trying again produced the same result, and a swipe of his hand underneath the cold metal of the knob revealed a flat surface, meaning that the door locked from the outside. And Dean knew this, he never meant for Sam to get out of the closet at all, not until he killed the Lapelas on his own.

Sam pounded on the door with the edge of his knuckles with a cry of Dean's name, trying to maneuver backwards, slamming his traction brace against the side wheelchair.

Light and pain exploded behind his eyes, his breath sucked in, like his body was trying to absorb the force of a tornado packed with jagged debris, the pain jolted Sam jolted forward in agony, crashing him to his knees.

He hit the ground hard and color exploded in his vision throwing his body backwards in an involuntary spasm, but the impact of this hit wasn't tile.

It was sand.

The light went from a thousand colors into a handful: brown and white, and gray. Brown of packed sand and white of marbled colonnades that looked to be erected a half mile from where he was dropped, with dotted with lumps of bronze.

Sam threw his right arm over his face from the glare of the light overhead, a bronze band of metal covered his flesh instead of the traction halo. It was carved with the head of a wolf surrounded by patterns of three interlocking crescent moons.

Sam pulled back his arm in bafflement, not at being able to see, but _what_ he was seeing. He turned his to the right and spied the iron knife in the dirt a hand span away from him, and he rolled over and picked it up, rolling onto a heavy metal. He only processes this half way, clamoring to his feet, feeling his right shoulder burn in protest.

The metal he had rolled on was a breast plate, black with a swirl of bronze like an artist wish, covering peaking of Dean's gray t-shirt that extended just above his knees. His lower legs were covered in bronze guards and his feet were covered in woven sandals.

His body felt heavy, and unbalanced, trying to support a foreign weight. The bronze colored lumps that he saw morphed into littered bodies of soldiers dressed in Greek battle gear, their blood dripping onto the brown dirt. The air smelled like Wolfspane and Hemlock, overhung with the smell of the fresh blood.

"Dean!" Sam's mind tried to both process where the hell he was and where in correlation that placed his brother. He moved with a burning pain in his arm over to the first body, a bearded man with blank dead eyes, his chest and ribs split apart like a lobster claw, blood pouring from all four corners of the empty cavity.

Sam raised his head and swept them over the fallen bodies in a span, until he saw that they went beyond his eye sight like weeds. "_Dean!"_

The sun filed sky was hampered at the ends by an encroaching gray, lit up by licks of lightning. A brilliant crack of thunder swirled sand up into Sam's eyes, blinding his new found vision, throwing his hands up over his face.

When he was able to his hands, a shape had emerged from the outer edges of the sandstorm: a woman with midnight black hair donned in solid bronze armor, a quiver of arrows strapped across her back and a jet black war bow in her right hand.

She approached Sam hurriedly over the carnage of bodies, eyes moving up to him like she recognized him.

It was a feeling that echoed instantly to Sam as he stared at the image of Artemis, Greek Goddess of Hunters.

"You will not see him Hunter," Artemis lowered her bow so that the tip of it touched the blood drenched sand. "Not until you have slain my dog."

**xxxxXxxx**

Dean walked slowly on his rain soaked boots down the hallway, flashes of lightening brightening it before being vaporized back into the darkness of the late night.

A nurse or two passed him, none that he recognized, none of them questioning who he was because of the stolen scrubs.

He continued to walk along the corridor, a brunette nurse turned to look up at him with a smile as he passed, watching him long after he had passed her.

He rounded the corner of the Critical Care Unit Nurse's Desk until he was only a foot away from the isolation room that Sam had been in, stopping short at the sight of a uniformed cop and a man in a suit talking to one of the nurses who had treated Sam earlier. The room was sealed off with yellow police tape.

Dean ducked down behind the nurses' station in a crouch.

"Did you see where they went?" The man who looked like a detective questioned the nurse who stood in front of the yellow taped room.

Dean watched the nurse's red ponytail bob as she shook her head. "There was so much commotion and noise, and then that- _thing_!-"

The detective cut her off with a hand on her shoulder, turning to the uniformed cop with him, "Any signs of something traceable?"

A crackle of the cops shortwave radio sounded off as the cop shook his head. "None yet Sir, we're not even sure exactly what the hell we're looking for," he nodded in the direction of the mangled room. "Guy in there had just got out of surgery, the nurse here overheard him talking to his brother, something about a Lasiefaire something I don't know-dude was gorked out on pain killers."

"Keep looking Thompson," the detective ordered. "Doesn't matter if this guy was smoking Salvia, _something_ killed two nurses on this floor, and put that doc in a bed down the hallway, and I wanna nab that son-of-a-bitch before this thing escalates."

"Yes Sir," Thompson agreed with the Detective, bringing out his radio to redirect the same message to the other officers that had come to the hospital.

A high pitched scream echoed from down the hallway like a rip in the air. The detective and the officer's head jerked up, both mean drew police issued weapons, but it was the officer who took off in a run first down the hallway where the scream had come from.

There came the blasting noise of gunshots followed by an echoing thunderous growl, followed by the officer's horrible scream.

"Thompson!" the Detective called out after him, quickly turning to the nurse. "Stay here!" He ran down the same hallway the officer had, his gun drawn out in front of him. The nurse's eyes bugged out of her head before she took off in the other direction down the hallway, colliding into Dean who had come out from behind the nurse's station, gun in his hand.

The nurse screamed, and Dean quickly slammed a hand over her mouth to muffle it. "I'm not here to hurt you, calm down!" he said around her gasped panting attempts to keep screaming.

"I'm letting you go-" Dean said around the woman's rapid breaths. Her eyes rolled up to him like a terrified horse. "You need to issue a Code Red Lockdown or whatever the hell your hospital does in case of dangerous animal attacks, then you need to get the hell out of here-alright?"

The nurses' eyes were bugged out in total panic and fear, but she nodded like a puppet being abused by its strings. Dean released his hand over her mouth, waiting to see if she trusted what he said at all. She didn't make a sound outside of gasping.

"Alright, go. "Run, _go!"_ Dean shoved the nurse away and she took his cue and bolted down the hallway with a thick thud of her sneakers.

Dean ducked down over the yellow police tape, stepping over broken glass and puddles of blood that littered the tile floor of the anteroom and continued like a footpath into the hospital room. The mattress on the bed was bowed in the center, the sheets were shredded and damp with IV fluids and more blood, some of it a deep black in color, the smell of Wolfspane hung in whispered notes in the air.

Dean swept his gun over the space in a slow arc, finding nothing but the evidence of what had happened. He dropped in a crouch under the bed rails, feeling with his right hand until it closed on the rustled feel of a plastic bag pinned by the sagging mattress. He yanked it out and dropped it on top of the bed, glancing up again to the shattered glass hole in the anteroom automatic door, watching for any return of the detective or his officer, and at the same time, listening for any dying screams. His eyes moved over the pile methodically searching, hoping that the Detective hadn't find it before he did. He spilled out Sam's blood stained clothes from the bag, searching Sam's rain and blood soaked canvas jacket, until his hand closed on the oak wood handle of the iron blade. He pulled it out then threw Sam's jacket over his body, pushing the sleeves up past his hands.

A clash of thunder echoed outside the drawn blinds, chased by a flash of lightening that lit up the blood that colored the blue sheets. He raised his eyes from the flash to a sensation that he felt creeping up the short hairs on the back of his neck, the moment that existed in-between silence and what happened when he turned around.

Dean turned on the next clap of thunder, blade drawn out.

The Lapelas watched him in the doorway to the anteroom in the human form in blood stained scrubs, eyeing him with an arrogance that was older that the western existence of the word. She stared at Dean in Sam's coat like she had caught him playing dress up without permission.

Dean watched her the same way, seeing stains of the bright red blood soaking half the green fabric of the scrubs that she wore like gory camouflage. "You might wanna try branching out from the Nurse Ratchet disguise, I doubt its fooling anyone anymore." He raised the blade out to her, sharpened end covering the visual end

The arrogance bled into the smile that she turned up to him. "Neither are you sweetheart." She stepped into the room in almost a saunter, but there was a just the slightest of hesitation on the right side, and under the fabric of her right arm, the blood wasn't red, but black in a half wet, half drying trail that soaked up the cotton. And her neck was wrung with the same black blood, shards of glass embedded into her flesh. "Though I have to give you major bonus level points-Wearing your little brother's clothes to be a decoy-" Her blood stained white sneakers stepped over shards of broken glass and puddles of IV fluids. "-pretty ballsy. And pretty ignorant." She stopped walking and stood in front of Dean, the distance between them only a knife span apart.

"You know, I actually don't care about what monsters think of me before I gut them-" Dean leveled the blade so that it would impale her throat if he brought it down in a slash.

She eyed the coat he wore up and down, seeing the places where Dean had to roll up the sleeves slightly. "Ironic isn't it?"

"What?" Dean retorted. "How a Mythological Dog is hanging around killing on South Beach?" Dean retorted. "They not have white sand beaches to your taste at the Parthenon?"

"How your _little_ brother's coat doesn't fit you, putrid filth," her words were rolled into a growl. "Though I'm sure he's probably bigger than you in other areas too."

"How about we skip all the monolauge crap and just get to the part where I carve my retribution out of your chest for what you did to my brother." Dean kept his movement on the knife, very, very, still, waiting.

The Lapelas smiled like someone would do to placate a child. "I didn't do anything to your brother, Hunter, He's still _alive_ so," she raised her now molten copper eyes directly into his, reaching out with one hand to place it against the side of his face. Her nails were ringed in dried blood, she moved her thumb down the stubble of his face like she was plucking guitar strings. "If it's retribution you want, tell me where you stashed him so I can give you areason."

Dean followed the path of her thumb against his skin, stepping closer; the tip of the blade pressing right at the tip of her neck. "Or I just do this instead."

**xxxxxXxxxx**

Artemis, Greek Goddess of Hunting and Hunters, she was shorter than Sam, slighter, but the bow in her hand easily outweighed half of her, yet she held it like she didn't. Her eyes were the same burnt chocolate color as the hair of the Lalepas in human form, and the storm winds blew up the sands in her eyes, but she didn't blink.

But Sam did.

And the grittiness felt real, the thunder overhead in the black clouds as real as when he had dangled hundreds of feet above the Miami skyline, the armor strapped to his body heavy with a real weight. He turned over to the bodies of men spread across the ground. "What is this place?"

"No place," Artemis answered him cryptically, "it is the in-between that is felt only when the Laepelas poison invades the body." Her eyes wandered over to the dead bodies as she said this.

"Why can't _you_ defeat this thing?" Sam insisted on the Goddess. "Isn't Laeplas is supposed to be a _gift_ from you to Procris."

"She _was_ a gift," Artemis' voice rose in anger that was swallowed up by the storm clouds. "5,000 years ago, until she became unruly, until her brother banished her from her home-"

"Her _brother?"_ Sam cut the goddess off in a bafflement that felt weak, even in this world he could feel the poison from the Lapelas, moving through him. "I thought she was the only one."

"There was a time when there were two," Artemis corrected. "She and her brother were both a gift from my father Lord Zeus to a mortal, but she was reckless, unable to hunt the Teumessian Fox with the same speed, so I separated them, gave her to another, Procris, for more intense training. This enraged her and she turned her killing from Foxes to men – after her first attacks of human blood I could no longer allow her to live- I began to call up help to take her down."

"Let me guess," Sam cut her off, turning around to the bodies that carpeted the ground. "She grew stronger than you thought she'd be and got pissed off at the idea of you wanting to take her out."

"By the time I had caught up to her, she was no longer under my control, she began to target the warriors that I sent, and destroyed them before they could reach her."

"So _kill_ her," Sam repeated again. "You're a fucking _goddess!-"_

"I cannot!" Artemis snapped in an anger that sent another snap of lightning in the sky, like Zeus had been regenerated from his death at the hands of Sam and Dean and was angry at his daughter. "These animals were decreed to not be slayed by immortals, but by man!"

"Lady, _I'm _not that man!" Sam argued. "Whatever this is, _isn't_ the real world," he pointed to the black clouds. "Because out there, I'm _dying-"_

"You _are_ one of mine_," _Artemis stepped forward with steps heavier than would have been normal for a pair of set a hand over the bronze arm guard on Sam's right arm, fingers pushed into the half-moon symbol carved on it, the representation to her name. "You are a _Hunter. _It is blended into every cell of your body, as well as your brother's. She knows this, it is why she tracked you both. But it is _you_ she bled into, it is _you _she has now marked for her kill, and it is you who must slay her." She looked upon the knife Sam held in his hand, like he was holding the wrong set of car keys. "By the same blade that was blessed to you at the start of the hunt." Her smaller hand closed around the hilt of the blade that peeked out through Sam's closed fist, her skin warm like a rock that had been left in the sun to heat.

"If any other warrior tries to defeat her," The Goddess eyes swept over the carnage of dead soldiers. "They will join their brethren here."

Sam's eyes flickered again to the dead bodies of the soldiers, the nearest one to him with a throat ripped wide open in a pool of dark blood that ran beneath sightless eyes locked in an agonizing moment of death.

**xxxxxXxxxxx**

The Lapelas grinned at Dean like she was licking scraps of meat out from in between her teeth. "You won't kill me."

"Wrong answer bitch," Dean glared at her like he already pictured her dead at his feet.

"Oh I'm afraid it isn't." The Lapelas' returned. "Myblood is the only thing that can save any of the prey I hunt. But it must been taken from me and given to them while my heart still beats inside of my chest_._" The smile was back on her face, slow and overly satisfied. "How wrong is my answer now, Hunter?"


	8. Chapter 8

**xxxxXxxxx**

"_Are you, are you, coming to the tree,_

_Where I told you to run, so we'd both be free?_

_Strange things did happen here, no stranger would it be_

_If we met at midnight, in the hanging tree."_

-Katniss Everden Mockingjay

**xxxxxXxxxx**

* * *

><p><strong>1987<strong>

_The bulbs overhead flickered in and out with a fizzing hum, all around was gray concrete and rows up rows of strangers' cars._

_Dean pulled Sam along with a grip that was growing slick with sweat from shouldering Sam's weight. Sam's feet began to slow underneath him in exhaustion, his mouth closed tightly in a whimper of pain that echoed around the gray parking garage._

"_C'mon Sammy, c'mon!" Dean hauled Sam up higher, eyes frantically searching for the Impala._

_Sam did his best to keep up with Dean, but his legs weren't nearly as long as his brother's and he was hurt. So soon his slowness became stumbling, which became nearly stopping entirely until Dean hefted Sam up with such a quick movement that Sam cried out from the way it caused pain all up and down his broken arm._

"_Dean-" Sam's bare feet scraped against the pavement. "Are we goin' to the car?"_

"_Yeah we're going to the car Sammy, and as soon as we do you can lie down in the back okay?" Dean reassured hoping that the second level of the garage the elevator had taken them too was the _right_ parking garage where their car was. He didn't want to think about trying to maneuver Sam back to the elevator and to another garage if he was wrong._

_Dean's eyes moved over all the cars he saw: blue Chevy station wagon, rust brown Dodge Model K Series, red Honda Accord with a giant dent in the bumper, and what looked like a slashed tire. He kept looking over and over the garage lot of cars, eyes going from frantic to desperate for the Impala to appear before Sam decided he'd had it and sat down. Just when Dean was about to give up and swear words far older than his age was meant for, he spotted the sleek, black body of their Impala next to a dark red Ford Tempo._

_Dean would have sighed in relief if he still wasn't afraid of being found out by some Sheriff doing night time security who would drag Sam back to the hospital and throw their dad in jail and take Dean from Sam. He grabbed Sam up like a toddler would grab up a too big cat and dragged him the rest of the distance over the concrete to the Impala. _

_Dean was panting by the time he reached the Impala's back door, but when he tried to open it, the door was locked tight. He leant Sam against the door carefully and tried the driver's side door with the same luck. Peeking through the windows showed all the locks to be down on all the doors, Dean pounded a fist onto the carin anger._

"_Dean?-"_

_When Dean turned to Sam's voice it was to Sam now sitting by the back right tire, bare legs splayed out in front of him. The parking garage felt sweltering to Dean, but Sam was shivering, hugging his one good arm up under his stomach. He watched Dean with wide eyes in the hospital gown with the evil looking clowns; the bottoms of his feet streaked with dirt from the filthy concrete and dotted with flecks of blood from scrapes. "When are we going home?" _

_Dean moved over to where Sam was huddled and sat down next to him. "As soon as dad gets here."_

"_How long will that be?" Sam shivered again._

"Soon,"_ Dean reached down and pulled off his socks and put them over Sam's dirty feet. His own feet were a beet red and sore. He stood back up and shed his jeans and started to put them on Sam, but Sam shoved them away._

"_You might be cold too Dee," Sam insisted, staring up with wide eyes at Dean in just a pair of faded blue boxer and no shoes or socks._

"_I'm not cold Sam," Dean insisted, and it wasn't a lie. ,"Quit moving-" he worked his too big pants up Sam's bare legs, the waist at least two sizes wider than Sam's._

"_Is daddy gonna get in trouble for taking me out of the hospital at bedtime?" Fear was already in Sam's eyes at the idea he had just suggested._

"_No," Dean answered, trying to use his best big brother voice despite how scared and tired he was. "Remember?" He sat back down beside Sam, crossing his bare feet and legs up under each other. "Dad's signed papers with that lady to take you home, Bedtime Rules don't count after you do that."_

"_So he's not in trouble?"_

"_You ask too many questions Sammy you know that?" Dean tried to sound casual. "_Nobody's _in trouble," He turned to his little brother. "Dad'll be out soon then we'll go to Uncle Bobby's and we can eat cereal all day and you can watch those dumb cartoons you like." _

_Dean's expression fell from fake casual into guilt at the sight of Sam in his too big pants and socks. "I'm sorry I tried to make you fly like Batman Sammy- I didn't mean for this to happen."_

_Sam stared up into Dean's face with hazel eyes with red lines like spider webs from being tired. "S'okay Dee."_

_Dean drew his arm across Sam's shoulders, feeling Sam's head settle into the cotton of his tshirt._

_Both boys sat on the concrete in this fashion for minutes that Dean couldn't check because his watch arm was around Sam's shoulders, and Sam was too little to tell time yet. But it was enough time for Sam to fall into a light sleep against Dean, his breath rank smelling, but blowing softly against Dean's shirt. _

_Sleep tugged at Dean's eyes, but he shook it away, and kept swiveling his head around, following the shadows, watching for any signs of danger and keeping alert for their dad._

_The thick sound of boots sounded off less than 20 feet to the right of them. Dean leant forward, his movement jostling Sam out of his light sleep, and Sam's expression mimicked Dean's wide eyes, both of them peering into shadows._

"_De-"_

_Dean clamped his hand over Sam's mouth before he could make any more noise._

_The boot steps drew closer, sounding almost like a big animal looking for prey. _

_Dean kept his hand firmly over Sam's mouth and backed them up until they were both tucked behind the tailgate of the Impala. Dean ducked his head down in between the wheels and the concrete. Pieces of legs attached to big boots walked in the empty space, now much closer than 20 feet._

_Sam's breath on Dean's hand grew faster, and his eyes grew bigger. Dean wiggled on the concrete until he was more in front of Sam, peering slowly around the shiny metal bumper._

_The legs became legs with jeans, then a shirt, then arms, then-_

"_Dean!" John was crouched in front of Dean and shook him by the shoulder._

_Dean's heart felt like it was rolling around loose in his ribcage. "I didn't have the key dad, we couldn't get in-" He lowered his hand off of Sam's mouth._

"_Daddy!" Sam practically shouted these words. _

"_Shh!" John stood back up and unlocked the driver's side door than reached a hand in the backseat and popped the door lock. "Hurry up and get in!"_

_Dean pulled Sam to his feet and reached around and opened the back door of the Impala with a familiar squeak of metal._

"_Get in Sam, Uncle Bobby's waiting," Dean pushed Sam up over the running gate and into the interior of the car._

_Sam squirmed and crawled himself up over the black bench seats with one hand; the engine of the Impala roared loudly to life inside the concrete garage._

"_Come on son!" John said to Dean._

_Dean climbed into the car beside Sam and closed the door, and no less than half a second later John pulled out of the parking spot with a squeal of tires, moving through the garage at a pace that made Dean dizzy._

_Sam sat back up in the black car's interior and scooted closer to Dean, clinging to his brother with his good arm._

_Dean in turn, leant a little closer to Sam, both of them leaning back into the well-worn crinkled leather as the Impala rolled downward diagonal angle until they left the garage all together and were roaring down Main Street and out into the night.  
><em>

**xxxxXxxx**

**2014**

"How do I get back?"

Artemis was no match for Sam in height or build. But he had seen her fight before, she was small but inhumanly agile and wickedly accurate with her cache of black weapons, Sam stared back into centuries when he looked into the Goddesses' eyes as his question escaped his mouth.

"Back there-" Sam pointed the tip of the blade in his hand to the swirling mass of dark clouds above a grand white building of colonnades. "How do I get _back there_?" His shout was swallowed up by the storm.

The Goddess stared at him like something was the matter with him in the same way that a crack was the matter with a broken glass. "You never left _there."_

Sam's brow furrowed in deep confusion on adrenaline. "You called it an in-between-" he looked down at the dark metal breast plate he wore, "Which means I'm still alive, I'm _somewhere-"_

"In your mind."

The wind swept up Sam's hair, sucking it up into the direction of the storm like a vortex, his eyes liquefied into pure confusion.

"The saliva of the Lapelas drips with Wolfspane and Hemlock," Artemis answered his confusion. "It kills her victims instantly except for her equals, Hunters. With them it brings them to the brink of what is to be their fate with her, a taunt to weaken them into madness before she finishes them off, leaving their souls trapped in this broken place forever."

Sam blinked the grit from his eyes and stared at all the shredded bodies and the blood that soaked the sand, all a thick dark red even with what must have been centuries since they were killed; like they would always stay in a perpetual state of being freshly slaughtered, never able to escape the brutal memory of being ripped apart.

"That's not going to happen to me!" Sam swallowed his words as lightning cracked open the sky. He lifted his head to the white hot bolts that zigzagged across the clouds now tinged an ethereal red.

"It is already happening to you."

He turned down to face Artemis at the next crack of lighting turned the red streaked sky nearly as bright as morning.

Artemis stared at the bronze armor on Sam's right arm like she saw through the illusions that had cloaked itself over the brace that held together his mangled bones. Her face hardened like it was turning stone. "You are arrogant beyond measure Hunter. What makes you believe you are able to cheat the fate that _all_ my other Hunters have befallen for centuries?"

"Because my brother is out there!" Sam stared into the depths of Artemis black eyes and found the reflection of himself staring back at him. "I don't give a shit about any other fate except his, you understand?" Sam finally raised the blade he was holding up so that it rested right against the flesh of Artemis neck. "Now, how do I get. back?"

Artemis stared at her reflection in the metal of the blade, not fearful, but not ignoring it. "You must draw on a connection from the outside life -this brother of yours," she blinked like she understood the fierce bond of siblings. "You must connect to the part of yourself that lives where he lives, it is the only way to break the hold of hallucinations and-" she paused like she was testing to see if Sam would even be worthy of the next request asked of him. "You must make a sacrificial offering to your patron God for a successful hunt."

Sam withdrew the knife from Artemis neck, and stepped back. He pulled the bronze armor guard off his right arm. Pain radiated hotly up flesh. He dropped the armored bronze to the dirt with a heavy clang. The inside of the metal was coated in red and black blood and pieces of torn flesh.

The skin of Sam's right arm was flayed like chewed up meat with long torn places with visible glints of bone. Pain poured over him like molten fire. Sam gripped his bloodied and shattered arm with his free hand, the flesh sticking to his palm. He kicked the bronze guard at Artemis sandals, locking his eyes fully on the Goddess. "Take me to my brother."

Artemis knelt and picked the bronze arm guard off the ground, bits of sand clung to blood coating the inside of it. She stared at it, then at Sam.

Sam's eyes were hazed in pain, but unrelenting.

The Goddess cupped the bloodied metal in her hands, bowing over it. Her lips moved fast, chanting a string of Ancient Greek. The bronze metal burst into a blue fire with flames that leapt up to touch the storm clouds.

The pain in Sam's arm ratcheted up to a thousand times higher than when he had originally been bitten. His body inward; he gripped his arm in agony, the landscape and the Goddess whited out in blistering pain. He kept a tight grip on his knife; the sand beneath his feet rumbled and hollowed like quicksand. The force hurled Sam off his feet; whiteness enveloped his sight like the light of the sun off a field of pure snow.

He crashed to the ground and into darkness, a clanging echoing around him as his fell to his knees on hard tile. He groped in the blackness, feeling the metal of the wheelchair in front of him. He pulled it towards him, the knife was still in his other hand, he closed his fingers around it and pulled himself up with the chair one handed sending it sliding forward with his stumbled momentum. He stood, stumbled again, knocking into the spilled items his fall had caused.

Each movement felt like a lit match was being struck against his nerves, he took a moment to try to breathe, pulling himself fully up with the wheelchair using both hands, a horrible scream at what he was doing to his broken arm tearing up his throat.

The blackness of his vision shifted from being absolute to having white streaks like lightning moving across a black night. He reached his hand towards the doorknob and the white streak came again, being from whenever something passed in front of his eyes. His hand connected to the door handle. He slid his fingers over the cold metal it until he felt a small hole in the metal where the door's lock was bolted into the handle outside.

Sam pivoted left and ran his arms up and along the wire shelves that he had knocked the supplies over from, feeling along them up and down, knocking over boxes of sterile gauze, bottles of irrigation water with heavy clangs. His hand fell into a bin of rustled plastic, but he felt something metal in them with a pointed tip.

He closed his hand around the plastic and pulled out a blue bag used to autoclave instruments. Fumbling with fingers and teeth he broke into the bag and pulled out a stainless steel pair of suture scissors. He pulled them completely wide open, bringing them down hard into the door, one the pointed tips buried itself halfway into the wood. Sam pulled back on the opposite handle in a hard yank until there came a sharp crack and the two ends of the scissors split apart.

His hands were coated in sweat and the tiny metal in his hand almost fell with a tinkering drop from the slickness, but he kept grip tight, maneuvering the pointed scissor tip into the hole in the door handle. He for the hole in the door again, jamming the pointed end of the scissor piece he held into it with a squeaking squeal of metal against metal. His grip on the sharp steel cut his fingers, staining the metal in blood. He twisted and turned with a panted: '_come on, come on!'_ until he heard the tumblers of the lock disengage.

He twisted the knob and the door swung outward with a squeak of hinges.

The air was almost a complete silence. There was the hum of medical equipment in the far distance, beeping of patient monitors that reached Sam like he had sonar hearing, but there was no sound of human noise.

He pushed the wheelchair out of the closet, rolling forward to move it out of his way. But it stopped rolling after a few seconds, bumping against something with a thunking sound, sending his balance tipping. He reached out to the lintel of the door for leverage, and his palm came away with a thick stickiness.

The moment his hand made contact, he smelled a thick smell, and he knew instantly what the wheelchair had bumped against. He let go of the door and moved past the wheelchair. His foot bumped what the wheelchair had run into, his bare skin bumping on a sneakered foot and coming away warm.

Sam didn't crouch to check, he knew that it was too late, the smell was too over powering.

The smell of blood grew stronger, like it had been dumped by the gallons across the entire floor.

Sam's blindness was instantly replaced by the images what he knew was lying beyond the black veil of the poison clouding his eyes, why a busy Miami hospital floor was so quiet. And in that fraction of a second he was grateful that he was blind, because he knew that the sight of what he was smelling would not be something that he wanted to see.

He held the knife in his good hand, raising it out, feeling along the wall with his free hand, gripping tight the built in wooden bar designed for patients to use as support when ambulating the hallways. The screws on the traction halo on his broken arm scraped the paint off the dry wall in a screeching line.

His movements were slow, jerky with pain, and he nearly tripped twice over two bodies that were against the wall in his way. These he checked, feeling for short, cropped hair, the bone structure of his Dean's face. When his hands closed on unfamiliar long hair from one body, then a beard from the other, he pulled himself back up. His mind screamed at him, but he had seen too much death before, there wasn't one fucking thing he could do to save them, and he had to get to Dean before this became him.

He continued to move along the wall, pulling himself inches at a time, moving in the direction where he had heard the elevator ding when Dean had wheeled him down this hallway. He felt the stickiness of other people's blood from the carnage he had just walked through.

He reached a large gap where the hallway opened up into another space. He was forced to let go of the wall, vertigo instantly claimed him without support and he pitched forward. He reached out to grab for purchase on something, hitting the end of built in desk of a nurse's station. He landed hard on it in his stomach, instantly gutted and groaning, He clamped his mouth around his groaning, to not give away to where he was.

He heard the breathing that wasn't his own.

He thrust his knife out in the direction of the sound. "Who's there?!" His voice was reedy, but loud, demanding. He heard the sound of the breathing become hitched, afraid.

Sam lowered the knife blade, setting it on the long desk, keeping the flat of his palm on the handle. "I'm not going to hurt you-_" _he kept his eyes in the direction of the noise. "Just tell me who you are."

The breathing stopped completely, but then he heard the faint rustle of fabric. He followed the sound and grabbed out at the rustle when it reached its loudest. His hand closed on the flesh of someone's elbow, and he heard a female sounding scream.

"Please let me go!-" the arm in his grip twisted and fought like an animal caught in a trap. "_please!"_

The screams felt like knives jamming up Sam's head, melting his brain, sending his balance teetering. He snagged the nurses station desk with the fingers of his broken hand, the pain jarred all the way up to his eyes. "I said I'm not going to hurt you!" he loosened his grip on the elbow of the woman he had grabbed, looking again in the direction of where he heard the voice. "Who are you?" Nausea clawed its way up his throat. "Do you work here?"

The woman didn't answer his question. "They're dead, they're all _dead!" _ Her voice was shrill, terrified. She- that _thing!-_"

"Where did she go?" Sam's grip became tight again, he couldn't let her go until he knew. "Did you see where she went?"

"She wasn't a _person-_ she killed them, I was in the break room, and I hid and locked the door-" The woman's voice fell away into a rattled kind of crying. "Oh god she killed them, she _killed them!" _her crying grew louder, the only other living sound on the floor besides him that he heard.

"Stop!" Sam yanked her body towards him. "_Stop!_" He couldn't see this woman's face at all, but he had seen her face before, on every other person who wasn't equipped to handle things like this that existed.

Her crying hitched like a nail caught in a sweater, swallowed up by the double fear of what she had seen and what Sam was doing to her.

"Look at me," Sam lowered the woman's arm with his hand, grip easing up again before he removed his hand completely off the nurse's arm. "That thing- I'm going to kill it-" He felt out across the counter until his fingers closed on the knife, he slid out towards him, and gripped it tightly. "But I need to you to tell me where she went, you understand?"

There came nothing but breathing before the woman's words came out in a sudden rush. "She went to the CCU."

Sam blinked sightlessly at her. "CCU?"

"Critical Care Unit," the nurse answered her use of the anagram. "Two floors above us. She said that there was something down there that was hers."

Sam turned his head to the left, down the hallway.

The movement of nurse's turned head in that same direction; Sam smelled the scent of her soap and sweat. "The elevator's down that way right?"

The nurse shook her head, not knowing that Sam couldn't see her. "But all elevators are sealed for a security lockdown."

Sam moved back to the sound of her voice. "Do you have a key card to access it?"

There was no response.

Sam's voice was physically starting to hurt him, his legs shook violently, but he kept his stance upright. "Listen to me, my brother is up there, I need you to unlock the elevator and let me on it." Sam wasn't touching the nurse anymore; but he heard her breathing moving in and out in trembles. "He's going to _die _unless I stop her, and so are you- you gotta trust me," Sam's breath was trembling as much as hers. "_please_."

The nurse's breathing stopped again for a long moment, then the rustle of the fabric of her uniform moved past him, her shoes running on the tile.

A wave of gripping pain raced up Sam's right side, he dropped the knife with a clatter to the nurses' station desk, his agonized breathing blotting out all other noise.

A hand closed on the crux of his elbow.

"It's this way-"

Sam felt the nurses' hands on his arm, and felt her pull him along in the open air. Sam nearly fell onto her, the height and weight difference was obviously too great between them for her to support him, He jerked himself up as much as was able too, hands groping out for anything to grip to avoid crushing her, feet sliding in and out beneath him.

"Almost there," the nurse called out the encouragement to Sam like it was just a normal day at her job.

Sam pulled himself forward on reserves that he didn't have, forcing it out of somewhere primal, fixing his mind on reaching Dean in time. His hand finally hit the metal of the side of the elevator door. His knees collided with something else metal: another wheelchair the nurse had placed there to block the door from closing. He pushed past it and opened the elevator door completely with his body yanking himself out of the nurse's grip, stumbling into the car.

He backed into the wooden bar against the metal wall.

"CCU's on the eighth floor," the nurse's voice came into the car with Sam. She gripped his hand and placed the knife in his palm. "I already pressed the button-"

"Get to as many people as you can," Sam closed his hand around the blade in his palm. "and get them all out of this place, you understand?" Sam tasted the thickness of blood in his mouth, gagging him; he coughed and spat the thick mass onto the elevator floor.

He still felt the nurses' presence still in the car, watching him, felt her hand still on his wrist.

"Thank you-" her voice was a terrified whisper.

"Hurry!" Sam cut her off.

The nurse's hand left his wrist, her footsteps backed up. The wheelchair squeaked and rattled with a rolling sound, and Sam heard the elevator doors shut, swallowing him inside. Then came a jerk, and the car started to climb.

**xxxxxXxxxx**

The sky outside continued to rage in its angry storm, the lightning now moving across the darkness in flashes too quick to count so that the night lit up in one hot white brilliance that threw itself into the opened blinds of the window.

"You just don't get this game, do you?" The Lapelas moved out of the way of Dean's knife, watching him. She wiped at the black blood on her neck like it was merely sweat. "All hunters' attempts for my blood, for glory or for their own lives, has ended with me taking theirs instead." She stepped right in front of the window, until she was close enough for Dean to smell the thickness of the blood that stained her clothes. "Your brother included. "She eyed him up and down like he was too stupid to realize something that was so obvious. "You can't save something that's already dead."

The neck round of lightning strikes streaked white across the sky. Dean's jaw closed so tightly it competed for the noise with the thunder outside. "You're lying."

"Am I?" The Lapelas' eyes dark eyes raised in even darker amusement. "My venom is slow, so agonizingly slow, but always one hundred percent lethal."

"Shut your mouth," Dean growled at her.

"Wherever you stashed him, you'll return to find nothing but a bloodied corpse."

"I said shut your mouth bitch!" Dean stepped forward pressed the knife right against her neck, his voice was an absolute warning that there had better be not an ounce of truth in her words.

"You're right, I'm lying," Her voice held a mirth that cracked the air like tinkling glass at the enraged look on Dean's eyes. She pushed his knife down like it was made of paper. "But you wasted your time trying to hide him from me sweetheart," the lightning at the window back lit her in a hazy white aurora. "I left a body trail all over this place for him to find us–judging by how suicidally loyal you two are for each other it'll be a reunion equal to Odysseus and Penelope. I might even let you live long enough to watch me eat him apart."

Everything Dean was looking at melted away and he saw nothing but bright red death. Two seconds would have been all it took to spill every last drop of black blood out of her body; but then his eyes shifted andhe caught sight of the reflection in the window that with the next flash of lightning.

"Back off!"

Dean turned away from the reflection in the window. "Sam! I said back off!"

Sam was at the doorway of the room, the iron knife poised in his hands, his body half bowed over from spasming muscles.

Dean stared at his brother - Sam wasn't supposed to be there, Dean had made sure of it.

Sam's sightless eyes moved from the white flash of movement of Dean's gesturing at him, the blood on the Lapelas permeating up his nostrils. "I'm finishing what I started!-"

"Sam, put the knife down!_"_ Dean barked, every instinct to protect Sam amped up to its maximum.

"I said she's mine Dean!" Splatters of blood sprayed out of Sam's mouth, staining the tile beneath him. "I'm the only one that can do this!"

The Lapelas' laugh echoed into an _actual_ bark. "You've been talking to that _bitch_ Artemis, haven't you?"

A flash of confusion came across Dean's face, and a flash of anger came across Sam's.

Sam stepped inside the room, his bare feet slicing on the broken glass. "You killed all those people!-"

"To get you to come to me," the Lapelas said this like it was an even trade. "And it _worked._"She laughed at the stone clenched look that came over Sam's face. "Artemis is a _bitch_ Sammy. She couldn't handle me so she tried to _kill _me instead, not the best family treatment." She moved away from Dean and took one step closer to Sam.

So did Dean, his eyes moving fast from the Lapelas to Sam, ready to make a move should she.

"I'm a _hunter, _just like you; killing things is a part of our nature." She stared at Sam, the copper in her eyes intensified like they had become windows that overlooked a forge. You are my chosen prey; everything else out there was bait. So if you have any remorse for all the death and carnage I wrought to lead you here, you'll let me finish what I started."

Sam backed up two steps, broken glass crunching bloody under his bare feet. He threw his blade down onto the tile with a heavy clang. "So come on."

"Sam-" Dean's voice left a trailing of '_what the hell man?' _ He saw Sam's entire body shake in faint tremors in that one gesture. He had no idea how the hell Sam was even standing.

"You wanna finish this?" Sam held out his broken arm to the Lapelas in a goad: "Here's your chance."

A smile of pleasured gluttony crossed the Lapelas face like she was already envisioning snapping apart Sam's ribcage with her teeth. Her body bowed down and morphed into black fur and massive paws. Her muzzle pulled back into a razor sharp snarl, right at Sam.

"_Sam don't!"_

She reared back and leapt through the distance between her and Sam, teeth bared right at his throat.

Dean shot forward and yanked the Lapelas by the scuffed skin on the back of her neck, wrenching her backwards, slashing his knife across and up her left side.

She swiveled her head on him in a snapping growl, catching the tips of his fingers in her jaws.

Dean growled a scream, blood and pain leaked down his hand, sliding his grip out of his knife. It clattered to the ground, and slid under one of the Laepelas massive black paws.

The Lapelas scrapped her paw across the handle of the blade, sliding it backwards across the floor. She lunged with snapping jaws opened wide over Dean's entire hand.

Dean ducked his hand from her attack just as her teeth snapped closed right where it had been. He grabbed her neck with his bleeding hand, her jaws held at bay only centimeters away from his face.

The noise of the knife dropping and Dean's scream amplified like crowd noise in a rock concert in Sam's ears. "No!" Sam threw himself into a dive to the floor, rolling right into the Lapelas body, tackling the giant dog to the ground. The traction halo on his arm broke apart with a horrible wail; they rolled together once before Sam's back smacked hard on the floor, the Lapelas on top of him.

The front paws of the Lapelas pinned Sam down like lead weights. She snarled so deeply it shook the cabinets and the metal rails of the bed. She raised one paw up and crushed it down on his broken arm.

Sam screamed.

"_Sam!" _Dean knelt up on one knee and drew his gun, firing a shot at the Lapelas' back.

Hemlock and Wolfspane dripped with a noxious smell onto Sam's eyes; He heard the sounds of gunshots above him, but the Lapelas growl didn't faze at all from the bullets. His breath came out of him like an over juiced orange, the pain from the weight of the Lapelas' giant paw on his arm felt like his flesh and bone were melting.

A hot puff of air blew down on his throat and a snarl came with zero distance between him and the ancient dog.

Sam slid his uninjured arm down behind his back, fingers grasping and pulling out with the knife that Dean had dropped.

"_Sammy no!"_

Sam raised the iron blade into the air and stabbed it up and under into the Lapelas' exposed chest, twisting it.

She reared back in a baying choke, copper eyes alight in shocked agony.

Sam yanked the knife out of her with a choked gasp, the world around him dizzy and black.

Pools of black blood poured out of the Lapelas' mouth. She stumbled backwards with a dying growl. Her enormous body listed to the side, collapsing in a heap right next to Sam on the floor.

The knife fell out of Sam's hand with clatter. His broken arm was shredded, the rods of the traction halo were splintered apart with bright red blood. A wall of fiery pain reached up his entire body, burning him alive and his next scream swallowed him.

"_SAM!" _ Dean threw himself on his feet and ran over Sam, falling hard on his knees.

Sam's body jerked in waves of agony, bucking him off of the floor.

"Sam!" Dean grabbed Sam's head in his hands. Sam's breathing was erratic and fast, like he couldn't pull in enough oxygen, his blood red eyes opened in pure, raw pain.

"Sam, _Sammy! _Hey!_-" _Dean shook Sam's head in his palms. "No- you hold on brother, you hear me!"

Dean turned to the body of the Lapelas that lay unmoving beside Sam in rivers of black blood. Sam continued to jerk in spastic pain under his hands, each breath he took becoming more desperate and bleeding.

Dean sprinted into the hallway and came back in seconds, dragging the metal crash cart over the broken glass. He yanked the defibrillator down off of the cart and turned on all the switches until the device lit up, and a green light indicated a level of charge. He grabbed the paddles and against the fur of the Lapels chest and pressed the paddle switches.

The body of the Lapelas jumped up hard. Dean dropped the paddles and placed a hand onto to the slashed bleeding knife would in the Lapelas' chest. "C'mon!-" Dean grabbed the paddles repeated the shock again. "_C'MON!" _ He cranked the joules on the defribulator up and shocked the Lapelas a third time at 400. He threw the paddles back against the machine, pressing his hand _into_ the bleeding knife wound again; there was a faint movement against his palm.

He pulled his hand out slick with black blood then tore into the drawers of the cart yanking out a packaged needled syringe, he ripped it open and plunged it into the Lapelas' chest, pulling back half a syringe of black blood.

He braced his hand around Sam's neck and stuck the needle into his skin, injecting the entire syringe of blood into Sam's jugular.

Sam's convulsions intensified, like he' been electrocuted by a live power line; his body arched off the ground in a scream.

"Sam!" Dean dropped the needle and grabbed Sam's face. "_SAM!" _

Sam's body jerked harder again and again, then all of a sudden stopped, going completely limp, no movement at all.

"_Sammy!_ Hey! – No god! _SAMMY!_-" Dean reached up and gripped Sam's head hard with blood stained hands, shaking, slapping _"C'mon, c'mon, c'mon!-"_

Sam's eyes opened with a gasp of air, the blood red of his pupils faded just enough to allow the hazel of his eyes to peak through. "Dean-" His brother's name was the same gasp of air, able to see Dean for the first time in hours. He felt like he had drowned and been thrown bleeding back onto the shore.

Dean's head dropped in utter relief. It's okay." He reached arm under Sam's shoulders; pulling Sam slowly in a sitting position. "It's okay, I got you, c'mon-"

"_Dean!-"_

The cadence of Dean's name from Sam changed pitch from a statement to a warning. Sam's eyes were still almost bloodshot red, but they were _focused_ on something.

Dean turned as the Lapelas raised her head up off the ground, trails of black blood pooling out of her eyes and nose. She opened her mouth wide.

Dean reached down and grabbed the knife that Sam had dropped, closing it into Sam's hand; and moved Sam's arm with his own stabbing Lapelas on the same wound Sam had inflicted, going all the way down to the hilt.

The Lapelas gave a last horrendous, dying yowl. Dean pulled Sam's grip out on the blade and the Lapelas fell over like a brick and did not get up again.


	9. Chapter 9

**xxxxXxxxx**

"_Sometimes being a brother is better than being a superhero."_

-Marc Brown

**xxxxXxxxx**

* * *

><p><strong><em>1987<em>**

"_You're still watching this?" Dean pushed by Sam's feet stuck out flat from Bobby's worn plaid sofa, two bowls of cereal in his hand. One of them Lucky Charms, the other one plain Cheerios. He set the bowl of Lucky charms onto the TV tray that Uncle Bobby had set up in front of Sam.  
><em>

_A Superman Cartoon played across Bobby's beat up RCA television. Superman was flying downward from a sky scraper to catch Lois Lane who had just been thrown off of the roof, flailing her arms and screaming for him._

_It had been three days since their dad had dropped them off at Uncle Bobby's house and Sam had been parked on the couch watching the same Superman cartoons the entire time._

_Superman swooped under Lois just in the nick of time and caught her, flying her down to the ground. _

_Sam turned away as Lois started kissing Superman's neck in gratitude, making a disgusted face until he spied the Lucky Charms in front of him. He sat up and reached for his spoon with his good hand. "Do girls ever try to kiss you like that Dean?" Sam's mouth was chocked full of marshmallows and the cereal that Dean would normally just throw out._

"_None of your business," Dean retorted back, gripping his hand on Sam's arm that held the spoon. "Slow down dude, you're going to choke." He waited until Sam swallowed, watching him take another bite before he was satisfied that he wouldn't choke to death on purple moons and green clovers. "Why'd you ask that about girls anyway Sammy?"_

"_Cause your Superman Dean-" Sam said like it was an obvious answer._

_Dean turned to Sam, his casted arm rested on the tray beside his cereal bowl covered in oval shaped stick figure drawings of dogs and black cars in permanent marker that Dean drew for him. _

"_I'm not Superman Sammy." Dean had thrown out the Superman shirt he bought in the trash at one of the rest stops on the way out of Florida; he would never be able to wear it again without picturing Sam falling off the shed and hearing his scream._

"_Yeah huh!" Sam interjected; a spray of chewed up marshmallows and cereal flew out of Sam's mouth and hit Dean in both cheeks._

"_Eww Sam, gross!" Dean wiped the chewed up cereal off his face. _

_Sam shot him a smile full of Lucky Charms._

"_How are we doing squirts?" Uncle Bobby came out of the kitchen and stared down at both of them. He was wearing jeans, a beige down fest, a faded gray shirt that said: 'Singer Salvage' and the same old ball cap that they'd seen him wear for years. A black pit bull moved past him and right over to Sam's side of the couch, jumping up and licking his face, jostling the cereal bowl on the table, Sam laughed._

_But Bobby didn't. "Gunner! Get down!" Bobby grabbed the pit bull's collar and pulled him off of the sofa._

_Gunner whined and tried to jump back up on the couch._

"_You stupid flea trap, I set get down!" Bobby pushed Gunner away. "Don't give me that look," Bobby said to the dog's whines and sad face. "How about you get back outside and guard my business like you're supposed to?" _

_Gunner hung his head even lower, tail drooping to the floor. He slunk, dejected, out of the living room and through a back screen door in the kitchen that led out into Bobby's salvage yard._

_Bobby eyed the dog until he disappeared, then turned his attention back to the boys on the couch. "You doin' okay there Sammy?"_

"_Yeah Uncle Bobby!" Sam said this as he continued to eat the cereal in front of him with such voraciousness Bobby was surprised that the kid wasn't choking._

"_Mind if I take a look the ol' catcher's arm kid?" Bobby bent over to inspect the cast that Sam had laid up beside his cereal bowl, seeing all the scribbling of cars and dogs drawn on the white fiberglass. He rotated the cast carefully, eyeing Sam for any signs of pain on his face. But those grape children's chewable Motrin pills that Bobby had given Sam an hour ago were obviously working because Sam only winced once, and not even a big wince._

_Dean watched Bobby moving Sam's broken arm with a hesitant breath, afraid that something might have happened to him when he wasn't looking._

_Bobby laid Sam's smaller fingers in his palm, pressing them down with the tips of his thumb. "This hurt kid?"_

_Sam shook his head, then said: "No."_

_Bobby slid a finger under where the cast started at the middle of Sam's palm, pressing lightly, but firmly on the skin. "How about here? Anything tingly or feelin' like the sun's burning you?" _

"_No Uncle Bobby," Sam said raising his hazel eyes up to Bobby's._

_Bobby pushed his finger carefully out of the cast and gently rotated Sam's arm back onto the tray in a more comfortable position._

"_Does it look okay Uncle Bobby?" Dean asked._

_Bobby looked down at Sam with a serious look, casting some of that look across to Dean._

_Dean's breath sucked back into his mouth like milk from a straw. He saw Sam watching him, so he sat up straighter and tried to hide his fear. _

"_I'm afraid so," Bobby looked at both his surrogate nephews with a serious face. "Looks like Sammy here is right on track to getting better," he roughed up Sam's messy hair affectionately and heard Dean let out a relieved breath. "I'll call your dad later on and tell him the good news." John had dropped the boys off with him a few days ago to track down a Shape Shifter in Wyoming, telling Bobby to keep him informed of Sam's progress with his broken arm. It was a far cry from a devoted father, but John sounded like he was trying, so Bobby didn't give him an earful this time._

"_When can I get this thing off?" Sam thumbed his cast like he wanted to take it off himself._

"_In another few weeks squirt," Bobby answered._

_The look on Sam's face was like Bobby had said in a few _years. _"But it itches!" He dug the thumb of his other hand into his cast like Bobby had._

"_Hey now, none of that, you're going to mess it up," Bobby pulled Sam's thumb out of the cast. "It has to stay on to heal Sam."_

"_But. It. _itches!"_ Sam repeated again like Bobby could not fully comprehend just what kind of pain and discomfort he was enduring. He sneakily stuck his thumb back under his cast._

"_Sammy quit!" This time it was Dean who yanked Sam's thumb out. "Uncle Bobby knows what this feels like; he broke his arm before."_

_The remark made Sam stop trying to scratch under his cast and look up at Bobby in amazement. "You _did?"

"_Sure did kid," Bobby answered. "Arm, both legs, shoulder, one time even my nose."_

"_How'd you break your _nose?"_ Sam questioned in wonder._

"_On a rake in the yard," Bobby answered. "Just like those cartoons you boys like to watch," He pantomimed a scene where he stepped on the business end of a rake and made a 'whap!' sound with his hand on his face to mimic the rake handle bashing him square in the face._

_Sam broke into peals of laughter._

"_Thanks for the sympathy Sam," Bobby joked as Sam continued to laugh in the way that kids did when they just discovered something new that was funny. He eyed the half eaten bowls of cereal in front of Sam and Dean. "How about we take a break from the cereal eating and I whip you boys up something hot, say like my famous Queso Chili?"_

_Both Sam and Dean sat up with eager expressions on their faces; Uncle Bobby's Queso chili was legendary, and didn't come out of a can._

_Dean sat up more on the sofa, staring at Bobby. "Can I help?" _

"_Sure thing kid," Bobby returned easily to Dean. "Always helps to have an extra pair of hands to do the work."_

_Cooking was something that neither Winchester boy did very often, not _real _cooking with pots and pans and chopping things. So whenever Bobby had the boys he would always think of something for them to do in the kitchen, and they loved getting to make things, and get a chance to be messy at the same time._

_Sam leaned over the arm of the sofa, mimicking his brother. "Can I help too Uncle Bobby?"_

"_I'm afraid not with that busted arm Sam," Bobby said to Sam. _

_Bobby watched Sam's expression drop practically to his socked feet in disappointment, and he felt like the biggest jerk there ever was for saying no. He set his hand on Sam's shoulder. "Sorry boy, but it's best that you rest your arm, alright?"_

_Sam sat back against the couch cushions with a thud. He dropped his head down, tracing the designs that Dean drew on his cast with his fingers looking like someone had ran over his puppy._

_Dean stared over at Sam; his younger brother's eyes half buried in his loose mop of dark hair. But even half hidden Dean saw the sheen of tears hanging just in Sam's eyes as he tried to watch the cartoon on the TV and pretend that they weren't there._

"_I changed my mind Uncle Bobby," Dean said. "I never got to see the end of this Superman before- it's supposed to be a really good one." his words were about the TV, but Dean never took his eyes off of Sam as he talked._

_Bobby watched the boys, a deep welled feeling winding tight in his gut as Dean settled back into the couch cushions beside Sam, reclaiming his bowl of Cheerios, taking another bite from it._

"_Don't you go and fill up on that now Dean," Bobby reprimanded, though there no harshness to it. "Hot food should be ready in about an hour and a half."_

"_Can we eat the chili in here?" Sam look hesitantly at Bobby, afraid that Bobby would say no again._

"_I think that would be okay," Bobby returned with a smile to the five-year-old. "Considering how Dean hasn't seen the ending of this Superman episode yet, wouldn't want to ruin it for him."_

_Sam's smile came back to his face, he leant forward and grabbed up his bowl of half eaten Lucky Charms leaning back by Dean, just like he was._

_Bobby watched the two boys on his sofa for a long moment before talking again. "I'll call you both when it's ready,"He heard Dean remark about something Lois Lane said to Clark Kent in the newsroom, and heard Sam giggling at it in return as he headed into his kitchen. _

_Dean turned his eyes away from the TV just as Lois disappeared into the elevator to go meet the informant who was secretly double crossing her and Superman to try and kill him; he'd seen this episode at least eight times already. He glanced over at Sam who had his bowl on his lap, slurping up cereal with his good hand, getting milk on his face, stopping every few seconds to place the spoon back into the bowl to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand._

_Dean turned back to the TV, just as Clark Kent was thrown off of the building by a man who didn't know who he really was. Midway to the ground, Clark became Superman and flew back up to the top of the skyscraper and to the surprised criminal._

_Sam's eyes widened in 'O's of excitement and he turned back to Dean. "He flew just like you did in Flor'da!"_

"_Sammy, stop it-" Dean turned to Sam, tucking his denim clad knee up on the sofa. "I already told you, I can't fly, I'm not Superman- he isn't even real okay?"_

_Sam turned to Dean in the same fashion Dean was, his hazel eyes misted in confusion. "Then what are you?"_

"_I'm just _me _Sam," Dean answered back like it was a confession that he didn't want to admit to himself._

_Sam's expression changed like he had been looking at Dean upside down this entire time. "Then you're _better _then Superman!" He grinned at his triumphant discovery._

_Dean stared back at Sam in bewilderment; a dry laugh bubbled its way up his throat. "Watch the TV you dork-" Dean shoved Sam playfully before turning back to the TV. _

_Sam tucked his head on Dean's arm pit, resting his broken arm near him._

**xxxxxXxxxxx**

**2014**

"Hey, did you get it?"

"_It's done, luckily I have some pull with the Miami-Dade police system, they handed over the surveillance tapes without much of an issue."_

"How much '_without much' _are we talking about_?"_ Dean questioned into his cell phone, pressing it between his shoulder and his ear as he lifted the lid of a black cast iron pot. Steam billowed up past his face; he picked up a wooden spoon from off the counter top in the Bunker's kitchen with a bandaged hand, stirring the contents inside.

"_They wanted to speak to the Bureau before handing the tapes over; do damage control at the local level first," _Jody responded from the other end of the line. _"They were more pissed off that they weren't informed about an animal attack was deadly enough to warrant an investigation from the FBI-"_

"So what'd did you tell them?" Dean stopped stirring and put the spoon down on the butcher block counter top, reaching over the stove for a long brown wooden pepper mill, grinding the whole peppercorn into flakes over the pot.

"_The truth-at least a variation on twisted version of it. Told them you and Sam were investigating some chatter about animal attacks when Sam got jumped in an alleyway, and there was no time to launch an official investigation before the shit started to hit the fan."_

"What about animal control?" After five cranks of the peppermill Dean dipped the wooden spoon into the pot and lifted it to his mouth, tasting. He pursed his lips together with a frown then moved over to a cutting board with pieces of chopped white onion on it in varying cube sizes. He grabbed a handful of them and dropped them into the pot.

"_Managed to forge a report that said that the burning of the body was necessary for contamination prevention. That part was harrier though, this –_Lapelas, _of yours, clawed her way through thirteen bodies – the two police officers that survived are critical, the doctors don't expect them to make it, and from what you say, they won't without this things blood-" _

"Look in-between the mattress of the room Sam was in," Dean threw another handful of onions into the pot and stirred them into the brown colored mixture.

"_I already did Dean," _Jody responded. "_The tube of that thing's blood you stashed was enough for both of them, but it was hell trying to find a way to give it to them without getting caught."_

"But you did it," Dean tasted the mixture again, his expression more satisfied, lowering the spoon back in to stir it again to mix in the flavors.

"_Hell or not, it was easy compared to what you boys must have gone through-" _Jody's words dropped off into a heavy pause. _"How's Sam doing?" _

Dean's hand stilled on the spoon, leaving it halfway stuck in the mixture. "That bitch really did a number on his arm, but the blood I gave him seems to be working-"

"_Not seems to be Dean,"_ Jody corrected. _"_Is. _Sam's a fighter, especially with you in his corner, you have to believe that."_

"I don't need my arm twisted on that Jody," Dean bent down and reached into the cabinets that sat under the stove pulling two steel blue ceramic bowls.

"_I'm talking about you being there for Sam,"_ Jody corrected._ "Just like he's there for you, don't either of you go blaming yourselves for any part of that understand?"_

"Yes ma'am, you got it," Dean's response was a like a quiet kind of hum, "Listen I gotta go, I'll tell Sam you said hey alright?" He ended the call and set his phone down, picking up the wooden spoon and scooping out the chili into the two bowls, filling them both over halfway.

He grabbed two spoons with bear claw shaped hands from the drawer and stuck them into the bowls, picking them both up and walked out of the kitchen with them.

He rounded the library and the map drawn conference table, moving down the long, black bricked hallway until he came Sam's door closed partway.

He pushed the door open with his shoulder with a creak of the wood; the door swing wide inward.

The manila comforter on the single bed was pulled out and thrown into a pile like regurgitation at the end of the mattress. Sam took up the bed's remaining occupancy, leaned up against a pillow behind the brick wall at his back, his jeans and t-shirt were wrinkled and had two day slept in wear. A wooden tray sat across his legs, and Sam was currently resting folded piles of newspaper on it, with his tablet resting at a propped up angle on the edge of it.

"Okay, here we go-" Dean stepped inside the bedroom with the bowls. "Bobby's famous Queso Chili- guaranteed to jump start some pep back in your step," he set one of the bowls on the wooden tray.

"Thanks," Sam moved the bowl off of the papers, folding them up with his right hand. His broken arm was laid out beside him on the pillows from Dean's room, the halo traction device re-created by Dean in a makeshift way by pieces of rebar and reams of white Curlex bandages.

Dean grabbed up the folded newspaper off the tray, grabbing up the bowl again.

"I got it Dean-" Sam made a grab for the bowl from Dean.

"Bobby's chili is gold Sam," Dean dropped the papers on the unpainted night stand on the right side of the bed then dropped the bowl of chili closer to Sam. "You're not wasting one damn drop of it being a one fisted drinker." He pulled the spoon out of the beans and handed it to him.

Sam huffed a quiet kind of sound, eyeing the recipe that looked almost identical to the one that he remembered. "When did you learn Bobby's recipe anyway?"

"Remember Ninth Grade in Syracuse? When I had to take Home Ec as an elective my freshman year," Dean responded- "My cooking skills then peaked at microwavable Hungry Man dinners so Bobby jimmied open his secret recipe box to keep me from looking like a total doushbag in front of everyone else."

"Wait- I thought you took _woodshop_ as your elective when you were a freshman," Sam cut in.

"They ran out of space in the class," Dean insisted to Sam's returning look, he shoved the spoon right at his nose. "_Eat." _

Sam finally took the spoon from his hand and Dean turned his attention to Sam's broken arm. He pulled a pocket knife out of his jeans, flipping the blade up, and slicing apart the curlex bandages on Sam's arm that had become damp with old blood with slow movements. After the bandages were cut all the way through, he carefully pulled the pieces apart like he was removing old skin, hearing Sam wince and the spoon drop out of his hand with a clatter against the bowl.

Sam's arm was tye dyed in blood and large dark bruising of varying purple shades, along with some gashes that Dean had sewn up with the field suture kit. The traction device had been almost torn apart, but the rods that were inserted in Sam's skin had been spared, along with most of the sutures that the surgeons had done in the hospital. Dean had cobbled together the rest of the device and had read up about orthopedic internal rotation device maintenance online, and had managed to turn screws and keep rods cleaned without any infections or other things going wrong - so far.

Sam looked over Dean's glancing, trying to decipher the look in his brother's face. "How's it look?"

"Like I should have dropped out of orthopedic surgeon school when I had the chance," Dean returned in a deadpan. "But you're not dead, so I'm calling that a win," He pinched the edges of each of Sam's fingernails, the digits were a dark reddish purple, but the color came back in a few seconds. He moved his hand up further on Sam's arm, pressing his nails into a spot just under a sutured surgical rod. "You feel that?"

Sam nodded on the edge of a wince.

Dean moved his hand up and repeated the same gesture over a particularly nasty looking dark purple bruise. "How about here?"

This time Sam's wince turned into a gasp. "Like a heart attack." The pain shot up through his nerves, before settling back down, but the acuity of the pain didn't reek of the fatality it had in the hospital, it was just the slightest notch duller, like it was trying to heal.

Dean took the moment of Sam already wincing to grab a bottle from off of the nightstand and pour the remaining dregs of a bottle of Makers Mark over his skin.

Sam nearly bolted out of the bed from the coldness and pain, his newly returned vision almost going white from both sensations.

"Hey, hey!-" Dean braced a hand on his arm, "Easy-"

Sam glanced up in a blow of exhaled breath up at Dean's hand on his shoulder; he saw the bleeding tips of bitten fingers. "How's your hand?"

"You mean this?" Dean held up his bandaged fingers like they were an afterthought. "It's fingernail polish Sam," Dean pulled a fresh roll of Curlex bandages from the top drawer of the dresser that sat on the right side of the bed. "I'm not the one who looks like a Mummy _and_ Young Frankenstein reject," He started at the top and began to roll the thin, gauzy bandages over the damaged flesh of Sam's arm, working the bandages around the rods in his skin.

"How'd you even know that I had to kill the Lapelas?" Sam asked in a subject change, but not an area change.

"I didn't," Dean wound the bandage down past Sam's elbow.

Sam's face distorted in confusion. ""Then why did you grab my hand with the knife?"

"I just figured all shit she was spouting about you being her prey meant more than her just being a bitching bitch. I took a shot and got lucky; that actually happens to me sometimes."

Sam gave a noise of disbelief. "More than sometimes." He watched as more of his mangled arm disappeared behind Curlex bandages.

"Shut it," Dean snapped.

Dry laughter escaped Sam's mouth at Dean's retort.

The Curlex bandage in Dean's hand ran out. He held it in place with his thumb, reaching into the drawer on the night stand, pulling out another package of Curlex and some white medical tape. He closed the drawer sending the stack of newspapers he set there falling to the ground. The front of the paper contained a headline about a '_Deadly Dog Attack_ _in the Sunshine State. _Dean tore off a piece of medical tape from the roll and affixed it to the end of the Curlex bandage and the beginning of the next roll before beginning his winding again. "Listen man I know you're cagey, But I think you need to lay off all the recon reading. Jody just checked in and she squared away as much as she could down in Miami."

Sam's look went quiet. "Thirteen people _died _in there Dean-"

"And it would have been _thirty_ if we weren't there Sam," Dean finished winding the length of the bandage and secured the loose piece under Sam's elbow.

"It would have been _zero_ if we weren't there Dean!" Sam yelled, he turned blood shot eyes up to Dean; after two days they were finally visibly hazel again, but they were still webbed in capillaries, and they stung the longer he kept them open, but he was able to see again. "The only reason the Lapeleas was there in the first place was because of us, because she was hunting _me!_ And you want me to _ignore it?"_

"I'm not saying ignore it," Dean cut Sam off. "I'm saying _stop_ with the blame, and the self-hate, and deprecation. Because you did what you had to do and you ganked that bitch. Now that may not be the win you want, but it's still a _win _Sam-" Dean paused for the span of a breath. "If you want to blame someone, blame _me_ for bringing you to that hospital in the first place."

Sam stared at Dean like he couldn't comprehend what Dean had said. "Dean you were doing what you had to do-"

"And I own it," Dean gathered all the bloody bandages off of the bed and threw them in the small tin garbage can that sat on the floor beside the bed. "I wasn't about to let you die from that mangy bitch, even at those costs. I could save a thousand people Sam, but if one of them isn't you, it doesn't mean a damn thing. That's how we live- and I'm not apologizing for it."

Sam's anger cooled like lava meeting the open air. He stared at Dean over the length that divided them in the air that smelled heavy like blood. "Thank you." The words were more mouthed than spoken, but the look that proceeded it weren't.

Dean didn't answer, but returned Sam's look. "Alright-" Dean said this after a long moment. He moved away from the bed and walked over to the dresser that stood on the left side of the door. "Let's derail this estrogen train shall we?" He opened the top drawer where Sam kept his socks and boxers, pulling a white plastic bag.

Sam eyed him from the bed. "Dude when do you stash shit in my _underwear_ drawer?"

"When you were unconscious for the better part of yesterday Sam," Dean pulled a DVD case out of the bag, and opened it with a snap. He inserted the disc into the black RCA player Sam had rigged up under the TV. "Shut up, and eat your food before it grows icicles sitting there will ya?"Dean stepped back after the DVD drawer closed, walking back around to the bed.

Sam watched the TV screen go blue, then black and white with an FBI warning flashing across the screen. "What is this?"

"Appropriate," Dean responded, picking up his bowl of chili, and dropped into the leather chair that sat next to Sam's bed. "It was a toss up between this and Season One of Zena Warrior Princess I found since you were hanging out with the Greek Gods again-"

"Shut up," Sam cut Dean off with this this time. "It's not like I had a choice, I was tripping balls on Ancient Greek Wolf roofies remember?"

"Yes you were," Dean spooned some of the chili into his mouth.

Sam made a disgruntled noise in this throat as an FBI warning for copyright infrigment flashed across the TV screen. It soon disappeared and was replaced by the DC Comics logo before vanishing again to a black screen. Sam's eyebrows encroached on his forehead in confusion, but raised up again when the introduction to Superman played over the cartoon view of the Metropolis skyline.

The scene opened up to the Daily Planet newsroom with Perry White talking to Lois Lane about a story for an unstoppable Earthquake machine that was threatening the city.

Sam made a surprised noise and glanced over at Dean the back at the screen just as Perry told Lois that they should call Superman, and seconds later a flash of blue and red shot into the newsroom sending papers flying everywhere, and Superman touched down right in front of Perry and Lois with a swish of his red cape.

Sam glanced back over to Dean, who watched the scene with nostalgia in his eyes, eyeing the show with a pleased shake of his head.

"Lois Lane, I tell ya man-" Dean made an over appreciative whistle at the shot of Lois leaning over her desk to write something down on a piece of paper. "Chick hasn't age a day."

"You do know she's a _cartoon_ Dean-" Sam told him.

"Hot is hot, Sammy," Dean corrected taking another spoonful of chili in his mouth. "I gotta say though I'll never know what the hell she sees in Superman. He flies around in blue lycra body suit and red speedo with a _belt _and his sex can kill her_-"_

"Dude you were the one wanted to _be _Superman remember?" Sam said, pulling the spoon through his bowl of chili and finally giving it a taste test. The beans and sauce were now lukewarm, but the flavor was just the way he remembered, laced with spices and onion and the heady taste of tarragon.

"Yeah when I was _nine_ Sam, and you were going stir crazy at that dump in Florida," Dean returned. "But I grew up, realized that _this_," he gestured to himself with his free hand, "was all there was too me, no superpowers, or blue body condom." He dug at his chili with his spoon, moving around the beans like he was digging a hole.

"That was never a bad thing," Sam said over the noise of the cartoon, he set the bowl of chili in his lap as Dean stared up at him from his bowl.

"Dean, the only reason that Superman was cool to me, was because I thought he was _you._"

Dean's mouth closed in silence around the words that stopped in his throat. He stated into the blood shot eyes of his brother across the distance between them.

And Sam stared back.

**xxxxxXxxxxx**

** End**

The Laelaps is a female mythological Greek Dog; a telling of the Legend states it was given as gift to a woman named Procris by Artemis, Greek Goddess of the Hunt, and that the Laelaps was always destined to catch its prey. There is only one Laelaps in Greek Mythology, but I took liberties with the rest of the mythology to fit the story.

Hope you liked it.

R/R please

Mystic


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